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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red One, by Jack London
+(#6 in our series by Jack London)
+
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+
+Title: The Red One
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: January, 1997  [EBook #788]
+[This file was first posted on January 25, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: September 17, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE RED ONE ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1919 Mills and Boon edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+THE RED ONE
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+
+The Red One
+The Hussy
+Like Argus of the Ancient Times
+The Princess
+
+
+
+
+STORY:  THE RED ONE
+
+
+
+
+There it was!  The abrupt liberation of sound!  As he timed it with
+his watch, Bassett likened it to the trump of an archangel.  Walls
+of cities, he meditated, might well fall down before so vast and
+compelling a summons.  For the thousandth time vainly he tried to
+analyse the tone-quality of that enormous peal that dominated the
+land far into the strong-holds of the surrounding tribes.  The
+mountain gorge which was its source rang to the rising tide of it
+until it brimmed over and flooded earth and sky and air.  With the
+wantonness of a sick man's fancy, he likened it to the mighty cry
+of some Titan of the Elder World vexed with misery or wrath.
+Higher and higher it arose, challenging and demanding in such
+profounds of volume that it seemed intended for ears beyond the
+narrow confines of the solar system.  There was in it, too, the
+clamour of protest in that there were no ears to hear and
+comprehend its utterance.
+
+- Such the sick man's fancy.  Still he strove to analyse the sound.
+Sonorous as thunder was it, mellow as a golden bell, thin and sweet
+as a thrummed taut cord of silver--no; it was none of these, nor a
+blend of these.  There were no words nor semblances in his
+vocabulary and experience with which to describe the totality of
+that sound.
+
+Time passed.  Minutes merged into quarters of hours, and quarters
+of hours into half-hours, and still the sound persisted, ever
+changing from its initial vocal impulse yet never receiving fresh
+impulse--fading, dimming, dying as enormously as it had sprung into
+being.  It became a confusion of troubled mutterings and babblings
+and colossal whisperings.  Slowly it withdrew, sob by sob, into
+whatever great bosom had birthed it, until it whimpered deadly
+whispers of wrath and as equally seductive whispers of delight,
+striving still to be heard, to convey some cosmic secret, some
+understanding of infinite import and value.  It dwindled to a ghost
+of sound that had lost its menace and promise, and became a thing
+that pulsed on in the sick man's consciousness for minutes after it
+had ceased.  When he could hear it no longer, Bassett glanced at
+his watch.  An hour had elapsed ere that archangel's trump had
+subsided into tonal nothingness.
+
+Was this, then, HIS dark tower?--Bassett pondered, remembering his
+Browning and gazing at his skeleton-like and fever-wasted hands.
+And the fancy made him smile--of Childe Roland bearing a slug-horn
+to his lips with an arm as feeble as his was.  Was it months, or
+years, he asked himself, since he first heard that mysterious call
+on the beach at Ringmanu?  To save himself he could not tell.  The
+long sickness had been most long.  In conscious count of time he
+knew of months, many of them; but he had no way of estimating the
+long intervals of delirium and stupor.  And how fared Captain
+Bateman of the blackbirder Nari? he wondered; and had Captain
+Bateman's drunken mate died of delirium tremens yet?
+
+From which vain speculations, Bassett turned idly to review all
+that had occurred since that day on the beach of Ringmanu when he
+first heard the sound and plunged into the jungle after it.  Sagawa
+had protested.  He could see him yet, his queer little monkeyish
+face eloquent with fear, his back burdened with specimen cases, in
+his hands Bassett's butterfly net and naturalist's shot-gun, as he
+quavered, in Beche-de-mer English:  "Me fella too much fright along
+bush.  Bad fella boy, too much stop'm along bush."
+
+Bassett smiled sadly at the recollection.  The little New Hanover
+boy had been frightened, but had proved faithful, following him
+without hesitancy into the bush in the quest after the source of
+the wonderful sound.  No fire-hollowed tree-trunk, that, throbbing
+war through the jungle depths, had been Bassett's conclusion.
+Erroneous had been his next conclusion, namely, that the source or
+cause could not be more distant than an hour's walk, and that he
+would easily be back by mid-afternoon to be picked up by the Nari's
+whale-boat.
+
+"That big fella noise no good, all the same devil-devil," Sagawa
+had adjudged.  And Sagawa had been right.  Had he not had his head
+hacked off within the day?  Bassett shuddered.  Without doubt
+Sagawa had been eaten as well by the "bad fella boys too much" that
+stopped along the bush.  He could see him, as he had last seen him,
+stripped of the shot-gun and all the naturalist's gear of his
+master, lying on the narrow trail where he had been decapitated
+barely the moment before.  Yes, within a minute the thing had
+happened.  Within a minute, looking back, Bassett had seen him
+trudging patiently along under his burdens.  Then Bassett's own
+trouble had come upon him.  He looked at the cruelly healed stumps
+of the first and second fingers of his left hand, then rubbed them
+softly into the indentation in the back of his skull.  Quick as had
+been the flash of the long handled tomahawk, he had been quick
+enough to duck away his head and partially to deflect the stroke
+with his up-flung hand.  Two fingers and a hasty scalp-wound had
+been the price he paid for his life.  With one barrel of his ten-
+gauge shot-gun he had blown the life out of the bushman who had so
+nearly got him; with the other barrel he had peppered the bushmen
+bending over Sagawa, and had the pleasure of knowing that the major
+portion of the charge had gone into the one who leaped away with
+Sagawa's head.  Everything had occurred in a flash.  Only himself,
+the slain bushman, and what remained of Sagawa, were in the narrow,
+wild-pig run of a path.  From the dark jungle on either side came
+no rustle of movement or sound of life.  And he had suffered
+distinct and dreadful shock.  For the first time in his life he had
+killed a human being, and he knew nausea as he contemplated the
+mess of his handiwork.
+
+Then had begun the chase.  He retreated up the pig-run before his
+hunters, who were between him and the beach.  How many there were,
+he could not guess.  There might have been one, or a hundred, for
+aught he saw of them.  That some of them took to the trees and
+travelled along through the jungle roof he was certain; but at the
+most he never glimpsed more than an occasional flitting of shadows.
+No bow-strings twanged that he could hear; but every little while,
+whence discharged he knew not, tiny arrows whispered past him or
+struck tree-boles and fluttered to the ground beside him.  They
+were bone-tipped and feather shafted, and the feathers, torn from
+the breasts of humming-birds, iridesced like jewels.
+
+Once--and now, after the long lapse of time, he chuckled gleefully
+at the recollection--he had detected a shadow above him that came
+to instant rest as he turned his gaze upward.  He could make out
+nothing, but, deciding to chance it, had fired at it a heavy charge
+of number five shot.  Squalling like an infuriated cat, the shadow
+crashed down through tree-ferns and orchids and thudded upon the
+earth at his feet, and, still squalling its rage and pain, had sunk
+its human teeth into the ankle of his stout tramping boot.  He, on
+the other hand, was not idle, and with his free foot had done what
+reduced the squalling to silence.  So inured to savagery has
+Bassett since become, that he chuckled again with the glee of the
+recollection.
+
+What a night had followed!  Small wonder that he had accumulated
+such a virulence and variety of fevers, he thought, as he recalled
+that sleepless night of torment, when the throb of his wounds was
+as nothing compared with the myriad stings of the mosquitoes.
+There had been no escaping them, and he had not dared to light a
+fire.  They had literally pumped his body full of poison, so that,
+with the coming of day, eyes swollen almost shut, he had stumbled
+blindly on, not caring much when his head should be hacked off and
+his carcass started on the way of Sagawa's to the cooking fire.
+Twenty-four hours had made a wreck of him--of mind as well as body.
+He had scarcely retained his wits at all, so maddened was he by the
+tremendous inoculation of poison he had received.  Several times he
+fired his shot-gun with effect into the shadows that dogged him.
+Stinging day insects and gnats added to his torment, while his
+bloody wounds attracted hosts of loathsome flies that clung
+sluggishly to his flesh and had to be brushed off and crushed off.
+
+Once, in that day, he heard again the wonderful sound, seemingly
+more distant, but rising imperiously above the nearer war-drums in
+the bush.  Right there was where he had made his mistake.  Thinking
+that he had passed beyond it and that, therefore, it was between
+him and the beach of Ringmanu, he had worked back toward it when in
+reality he was penetrating deeper and deeper into the mysterious
+heart of the unexplored island.  That night, crawling in among the
+twisted roots of a banyan tree, he had slept from exhaustion while
+the mosquitoes had had their will of him.
+
+Followed days and nights that were vague as nightmares in his
+memory.  One clear vision he remembered was of suddenly finding
+himself in the midst of a bush village and watching the old men and
+children fleeing into the jungle.  All had fled but one.  From
+close at hand and above him, a whimpering as of some animal in pain
+and terror had startled him.  And looking up he had seen her--a
+girl, or young woman rather, suspended by one arm in the cooking
+sun.  Perhaps for days she had so hung.  Her swollen, protruding
+tongue spoke as much.  Still alive, she gazed at him with eyes of
+terror.  Past help, he decided, as he noted the swellings of her
+legs which advertised that the joints had been crushed and the
+great bones broken.  He resolved to shoot her, and there the vision
+terminated.  He could not remember whether he had or not, any more
+than could he remember how he chanced to be in that village, or how
+he succeeded in getting away from it.
+
+Many pictures, unrelated, came and went in Bassett's mind as he
+reviewed that period of his terrible wanderings.  He remembered
+invading another village of a dozen houses and driving all before
+him with his shot-gun save, for one old man, too feeble to flee,
+who spat at him and whined and snarled as he dug open a ground-oven
+and from amid the hot stones dragged forth a roasted pig that
+steamed its essence deliciously through its green-leaf wrappings.
+It was at this place that a wantonness of savagery had seized upon
+him.  Having feasted, ready to depart with a hind-quarter of the
+pig in his hand, he deliberately fired the grass thatch of a house
+with his burning glass.
+
+But seared deepest of all in Bassett's brain, was the dank and
+noisome jungle.  It actually stank with evil, and it was always
+twilight.  Rarely did a shaft of sunlight penetrate its matted roof
+a hundred feet overhead.  And beneath that roof was an aerial ooze
+of vegetation, a monstrous, parasitic dripping of decadent life-
+forms that rooted in death and lived on death.  And through all
+this he drifted, ever pursued by the flitting shadows of the
+anthropophagi, themselves ghosts of evil that dared not face him in
+battle but that knew that, soon or late, they would feed on him.
+Bassett remembered that at the time, in lucid moments, he had
+likened himself to a wounded bull pursued by plains' coyotes too
+cowardly to battle with him for the meat of him, yet certain of the
+inevitable end of him when they would be full gorged.  As the
+bull's horns and stamping hoofs kept off the coyotes, so his shot-
+gun kept off these Solomon Islanders, these twilight shades of
+bushmen of the island of Guadalcanal.
+
+Came the day of the grass lands.  Abruptly, as if cloven by the
+sword of God in the hand of God, the jungle terminated.  The edge
+of it, perpendicular and as black as the infamy of it, was a
+hundred feet up and down.  And, beginning at the edge of it, grew
+the grass--sweet, soft, tender, pasture grass that would have
+delighted the eyes and beasts of any husbandman and that extended,
+on and on, for leagues and leagues of velvet verdure, to the
+backbone of the great island, the towering mountain range flung up
+by some ancient earth-cataclysm, serrated and gullied but not yet
+erased by the erosive tropic rains.  But the grass!  He had crawled
+into it a dozen yards, buried his face in it, smelled it, and
+broken down in a fit of involuntary weeping.
+
+And, while he wept, the wonderful sound had pealed forth--if by
+PEAL, he had often thought since, an adequate description could be
+given of the enunciation of so vast a sound melting sweet.  Sweet
+it was, as no sound ever heard.  Vast it was, of so mighty a
+resonance that it might have proceeded from some brazen-throated
+monster.  And yet it called to him across that leagues-wide
+savannah, and was like a benediction to his long-suffering, pain
+racked spirit.
+
+He remembered how he lay there in the grass, wet-cheeked but no
+longer sobbing, listening to the sound and wondering that he had
+been able to hear it on the beach of Ringmanu.  Some freak of air
+pressures and air currents, he reflected, had made it possible for
+the sound to carry so far.  Such conditions might not happen again
+in a thousand days or ten thousand days, but the one day it had
+happened had been the day he landed from the Nari for several
+hours' collecting.  Especially had he been in quest of the famed
+jungle butterfly, a foot across from wing-tip to wing-tip, as
+velvet-dusky of lack of colour as was the gloom of the roof, of
+such lofty arboreal habits that it resorted only to the jungle roof
+and could be brought down only by a dose of shot.  It was for this
+purpose that Sagawa had carried the ten-gauge shot-gun.
+
+Two days and nights he had spent crawling across that belt of grass
+land.  He had suffered much, but pursuit had ceased at the jungle-
+edge.  And he would have died of thirst had not a heavy
+thunderstorm revived him on the second day.
+
+And then had come Balatta.  In the first shade, where the savannah
+yielded to the dense mountain jungle, he had collapsed to die.  At
+first she had squealed with delight at sight of his helplessness,
+and was for beating his brain out with a stout forest branch.
+Perhaps it was his very utter helplessness that had appealed to
+her, and perhaps it was her human curiosity that made her refrain.
+At any rate, she had refrained, for he opened his eyes again under
+the impending blow, and saw her studying him intently.  What
+especially struck her about him were his blue eyes and white skin.
+Coolly she had squatted on her hams, spat on his arm, and with her
+finger-tips scrubbed away the dirt of days and nights of muck and
+jungle that sullied the pristine whiteness of his skin.
+
+And everything about her had struck him especially, although there
+was nothing conventional about her at all.  He laughed weakly at
+the recollection, for she had been as innocent of garb as Eve
+before the fig-leaf adventure.  Squat and lean at the same time,
+asymmetrically limbed, string-muscled as if with lengths of
+cordage, dirt-caked from infancy save for casual showers, she was
+as unbeautiful a prototype of woman as he, with a scientist's eye,
+had ever gazed upon.  Her breasts advertised at the one time her
+maturity and youth; and, if by nothing else, her sex was advertised
+by the one article of finery with which she was adorned, namely a
+pig's tail, thrust though a hole in her left ear-lobe.  So lately
+had the tail been severed, that its raw end still oozed blood that
+dried upon her shoulder like so much candle-droppings.  And her
+face!  A twisted and wizened complex of apish features, perforated
+by upturned, sky-open, Mongolian nostrils, by a mouth that sagged
+from a huge upper-lip and faded precipitately into a retreating
+chin, by peering querulous eyes that blinked as blink the eyes of
+denizens of monkey-cages.
+
+Not even the water she brought him in a forest-leaf, and the
+ancient and half-putrid chunk of roast pig, could redeem in the
+slightest the grotesque hideousness of her.  When he had eaten
+weakly for a space, he closed his eyes in order not to see her,
+although again and again she poked them open to peer at the blue of
+them.  Then had come the sound.  Nearer, much nearer, he knew it to
+be; and he knew equally well, despite the weary way he had come,
+that it was still many hours distant.  The effect of it on her had
+been startling.  She cringed under it, with averted face, moaning
+and chattering with fear.  But after it had lived its full life of
+an hour, he closed his eyes and fell asleep with Balatta brushing
+the flies from him.
+
+When he awoke it was night, and she was gone.  But he was aware of
+renewed strength, and, by then too thoroughly inoculated by the
+mosquito poison to suffer further inflammation, he closed his eyes
+and slept an unbroken stretch till sun-up.  A little later Balatta
+had returned, bringing with her a half-dozen women who, unbeautiful
+as they were, were patently not so unbeautiful as she.  She
+evidenced by her conduct that she considered him her find, her
+property, and the pride she took in showing him off would have been
+ludicrous had his situation not been so desperate.
+
+Later, after what had been to him a terrible journey of miles, when
+he collapsed in front of the devil-devil house in the shadow of the
+breadfruit tree, she had shown very lively ideas on the matter of
+retaining possession of him.  Ngurn, whom Bassett was to know
+afterward as the devil-devil doctor, priest, or medicine man of the
+village, had wanted his head.  Others of the grinning and
+chattering monkey-men, all as stark of clothes and bestial of
+appearance as Balatta, had wanted his body for the roasting oven.
+At that time he had not understood their language, if by LANGUAGE
+might be dignified the uncouth sounds they made to represent ideas.
+But Bassett had thoroughly understood the matter of debate,
+especially when the men pressed and prodded and felt of the flesh
+of him as if he were so much commodity in a butcher's stall.
+
+Balatta had been losing the debate rapidly, when the accident
+happened.  One of the men, curiously examining Bassett's shot-gun,
+managed to cock and pull a trigger.  The recoil of the butt into
+the pit of the man's stomach had not been the most sanguinary
+result, for the charge of shot, at a distance of a yard, had blown
+the head of one of the debaters into nothingness.
+
+Even Balatta joined the others in flight, and, ere they returned,
+his senses already reeling from the oncoming fever-attack, Bassett
+had regained possession of the gun.  Whereupon, although his teeth
+chattered with the ague and his swimming eyes could scarcely see,
+he held on to his fading consciousness until he could intimidate
+the bushmen with the simple magics of compass, watch, burning
+glass, and matches.  At the last, with due emphasis, of solemnity
+and awfulness, he had killed a young pig with his shot-gun and
+promptly fainted.
+
+Bassett flexed his arm-muscles in quest of what possible strength
+might reside in such weakness, and dragged himself slowly and
+totteringly to his feet.  He was shockingly emaciated; yet, during
+the various convalescences of the many months of his long sickness,
+he had never regained quite the same degree of strength as this
+time.  What he feared was another relapse such as he had already
+frequently experienced.  Without drugs, without even quinine, he
+had managed so far to live through a combination of the most
+pernicious and most malignant of malarial and black-water fevers.
+But could he continue to endure?  Such was his everlasting query.
+For, like the genuine scientist he was, he would not be content to
+die until he had solved the secret of the sound.
+
+Supported by a staff, he staggered the few steps to the devil-devil
+house where death and Ngurn reigned in gloom.  Almost as infamously
+dark and evil-stinking as the jungle was the devil-devil house--in
+Bassett's opinion.  Yet therein was usually to be found his
+favourite crony and gossip, Ngurn, always willing for a yarn or a
+discussion, the while he sat in the ashes of death and in a slow
+smoke shrewdly revolved curing human heads suspended from the
+rafters.  For, through the months' interval of consciousness of his
+long sickness, Bassett had mastered the psychological simplicities
+and lingual difficulties of the language of the tribe of Ngurn and
+Balatta and Vngngn--the latter the addle-headed young chief who was
+ruled by Ngurn, and who, whispered intrigue had it, was the son of
+Ngurn.
+
+"Will the Red One speak to-day?" Bassett asked, by this time so
+accustomed to the old man's gruesome occupation as to take even an
+interest in the progress of the smoke-curing.
+
+With the eye of an expert Ngurn examined the particular head he was
+at work upon.
+
+"It will be ten days before I can say 'finish,'" he said.  "Never
+has any man fixed heads like these."
+
+Bassett smiled inwardly at the old fellow's reluctance to talk with
+him of the Red One.  It had always been so.  Never, by any chance,
+had Ngurn or any other member of the weird tribe divulged the
+slightest hint of any physical characteristic of the Red One.
+Physical the Red One must be, to emit the wonderful sound, and
+though it was called the Red One, Bassett could not be sure that
+red represented the colour of it.  Red enough were the deeds and
+powers of it, from what abstract clues he had gleaned.  Not alone,
+had Ngurn informed him, was the Red One more bestial powerful than
+the neighbour tribal gods, ever athirst for the red blood of living
+human sacrifices, but the neighbour gods themselves were sacrificed
+and tormented before him.  He was the god of a dozen allied
+villages similar to this one, which was the central and commanding
+village of the federation.  By virtue of the Red One many alien
+villages had been devastated and even wiped out, the prisoners
+sacrificed to the Red One.  This was true to-day, and it extended
+back into old history carried down by word of mouth through the
+generations.  When he, Ngurn, had been a young man, the tribes
+beyond the grass lands had made a war raid.  In the counter raid,
+Ngurn and his fighting folk had made many prisoners.  Of children
+alone over five score living had been bled white before the Red
+One, and many, many more men and women.
+
+The Thunderer was another of Ngurn's names for the mysterious
+deity.  Also at times was he called The Loud Shouter, The God-
+Voiced, The Bird-Throated, The One with the Throat Sweet as the
+Throat of the Honey-Bird, The Sun Singer, and The Star-Born.
+
+Why The Star-Born?  In vain Bassett interrogated Ngurn.  According
+to that old devil-devil doctor, the Red One had always been, just
+where he was at present, for ever singing and thundering his will
+over men.  But Ngurn's father, wrapped in decaying grass-matting
+and hanging even then over their heads among the smoky rafters of
+the devil-devil house, had held otherwise.  That departed wise one
+had believed that the Red One came from out of the starry night,
+else why--so his argument had run--had the old and forgotten ones
+passed his name down as the Star-Born?  Bassett could not but
+recognize something cogent in such argument.  But Ngurn affirmed
+the long years of his long life, wherein he had gazed upon many
+starry nights, yet never had he found a star on grass land or in
+jungle depth--and he had looked for them.  True, he had beheld
+shooting stars (this in reply to Bassett's contention); but
+likewise had he beheld the phosphorescence of fungoid growths and
+rotten meat and fireflies on dark nights, and the flames of wood-
+fires and of blazing candle-nuts; yet what were flame and blaze and
+glow when they had flamed and blazed and glowed?  Answer:
+memories, memories only, of things which had ceased to be, like
+memories of matings accomplished, of feasts forgotten, of desires
+that were the ghosts of desires, flaring, flaming, burning, yet
+unrealized in achievement of easement and satisfaction.  Where was
+the appetite of yesterday? the roasted flesh of the wild pig the
+hunter's arrow failed to slay? the maid, unwed and dead ere the
+young man knew her?
+
+A memory was not a star, was Ngurn's contention.  How could a
+memory be a star?  Further, after all his long life he still
+observed the starry night-sky unaltered.  Never had he noted the
+absence of a single star from its accustomed place.  Besides, stars
+were fire, and the Red One was not fire--which last involuntary
+betrayal told Bassett nothing.
+
+"Will the Red One speak to-morrow?" he queried.
+
+Ngurn shrugged his shoulders as who should say.
+
+"And the day after?--and the day after that?" Bassett persisted.
+
+"I would like to have the curing of your head," Ngurn changed the
+subject.  "It is different from any other head.  No devil-devil has
+a head like it.  Besides, I would cure it well.  I would take
+months and months.  The moons would come and the moons would go,
+and the smoke would be very slow, and I should myself gather the
+materials for the curing smoke.  The skin would not wrinkle.  It
+would be as smooth as your skin now."
+
+He stood up, and from the dim rafters, grimed with the smoking of
+countless heads, where day was no more than a gloom, took down a
+matting-wrapped parcel and began to open it.
+
+"It is a head like yours," he said, "but it is poorly cured."
+
+Bassett had pricked up his ears at the suggestion that it was a
+white man's head; for he had long since come to accept that these
+jungle-dwellers, in the midmost centre of the great island, had
+never had intercourse with white men.  Certainly he had found them
+without the almost universal beche-de-mer English of the west South
+Pacific.  Nor had they knowledge of tobacco, nor of gunpowder.
+Their few precious knives, made from lengths of hoop-iron, and
+their few and more precious tomahawks from cheap trade hatchets, he
+had surmised they had captured in war from the bushmen of the
+jungle beyond the grass lands, and that they, in turn, had
+similarly gained them from the salt-water men who fringed the coral
+beaches of the shore and had contact with the occasional white men.
+
+"The folk in the out beyond do not know how to cure heads," old
+Ngurn explained, as he drew forth from the filthy matting and
+placed in Bassett's hands an indubitable white man's head.
+
+Ancient it was beyond question; white it was as the blond hair
+attested.  He could have sworn it once belonged to an Englishman,
+and to an Englishman of long before by token of the heavy gold
+circlets still threaded in the withered ear-lobes.
+
+"Now your head . . . " the devil-devil doctor began on his
+favourite topic.
+
+"I'll tell you what," Bassett interrupted, struck by a new idea.
+"When I die I'll let you have my head to cure, if, first, you take
+me to look upon the Red One."
+
+"I will have your head anyway when you are dead," Ngurn rejected
+the proposition.  He added, with the brutal frankness of the
+savage:  "Besides, you have not long to live.  You are almost a
+dead man now.  You will grow less strong.  In not many months I
+shall have you here turning and turning in the smoke.  It is
+pleasant, through the long afternoons, to turn the head of one you
+have known as well as I know you.  And I shall talk to you and tell
+you the many secrets you want to know.  Which will not matter, for
+you will be dead."
+
+"Ngurn," Bassett threatened in sudden anger.  "You know the Baby
+Thunder in the Iron that is mine."  (This was in reference to his
+all-potent and all-awful shotgun.)  "I can kill you any time, and
+then you will not get my head."
+
+"Just the same, will Vngngn, or some one else of my folk get it,"
+Ngurn complacently assured him.  "And just the same will it turn
+here in the and turn devil-devil house in the smoke.  The quicker
+you slay me with your Baby Thunder, the quicker will your head turn
+in the smoke."
+
+And Bassett knew he was beaten in the discussion.
+
+What was the Red One?--Bassett asked himself a thousand times in
+the succeeding week, while he seemed to grow stronger.  What was
+the source of the wonderful sound?  What was this Sun Singer, this
+Star-Born One, this mysterious deity, as bestial-conducted as the
+black and kinky-headed and monkey-like human beasts who worshipped
+it, and whose silver-sweet, bull-mouthed singing and commanding he
+had heard at the taboo distance for so long?
+
+Ngurn had he failed to bribe with the inevitable curing of his head
+when he was dead.  Vngngn, imbecile and chief that he was, was too
+imbecilic, too much under the sway of Ngurn, to be considered.
+Remained Balatta, who, from the time she found him and poked his
+blue eyes open to recrudescence of her grotesque female
+hideousness, had continued his adorer.  Woman she was, and he had
+long known that the only way to win from her treason of her tribe
+was through the woman's heart of her.
+
+Bassett was a fastidious man.  He had never recovered from the
+initial horror caused by Balatta's female awfulness.  Back in
+England, even at best the charm of woman, to him, had never been
+robust.  Yet now, resolutely, as only a man can do who is capable
+of martyring himself for the cause of science, he proceeded to
+violate all the fineness and delicacy of his nature by making love
+to the unthinkably disgusting bushwoman.
+
+He shuddered, but with averted face hid his grimaces and swallowed
+his gorge as he put his arm around her dirt-crusted shoulders and
+felt the contact of her rancidoily and kinky hair with his neck and
+chin.  But he nearly screamed when she succumbed to that caress so
+at the very first of the courtship and mowed and gibbered and
+squealed little, queer, pig-like gurgly noises of delight.  It was
+too much.  And the next he did in the singular courtship was to
+take her down to the stream and give her a vigorous scrubbing.
+
+From then on he devoted himself to her like a true swain as
+frequently and for as long at a time as his will could override his
+repugnance.  But marriage, which she ardently suggested, with due
+observance of tribal custom, he balked at.  Fortunately, taboo rule
+was strong in the tribe.  Thus, Ngurn could never touch bone, or
+flesh, or hide of crocodile.  This had been ordained at his birth.
+Vngngn was denied ever the touch of woman.  Such pollution, did it
+chance to occur, could be purged only by the death of the offending
+female.  It had happened once, since Bassett's arrival, when a girl
+of nine, running in play, stumbled and fell against the sacred
+chief.  And the girl-child was seen no more.  In whispers, Balatta
+told Bassett that she had been three days and nights in dying
+before the Red One.  As for Balatta, the breadfruit was taboo to
+her.  For which Bassett was thankful.  The taboo might have been
+water.
+
+For himself, he fabricated a special taboo.  Only could he marry,
+he explained, when the Southern Cross rode highest in the sky.
+Knowing his astronomy, he thus gained a reprieve of nearly nine
+months; and he was confident that within that time he would either
+be dead or escaped to the coast with full knowledge of the Red One
+and of the source of the Red One's wonderful voice.  At first he
+had fancied the Red One to be some colossal statue, like Memnon,
+rendered vocal under certain temperature conditions of sunlight.
+But when, after a war raid, a batch of prisoners was brought in and
+the sacrifice made at night, in the midst of rain, when the sun
+could play no part, the Red One had been more vocal than usual,
+Bassett discarded that hypothesis.
+
+In company with Balatta, sometimes with men and parties of women,
+the freedom of the jungle was his for three quadrants of the
+compass.  But the fourth quadrant, which contained the Red One's
+abiding place, was taboo.  He made more thorough love to Balatta--
+also saw to it that she scrubbed herself more frequently.  Eternal
+female she was, capable of any treason for the sake of love.  And,
+though the sight of her was provocative of nausea and the contact
+of her provocative of despair, although he could not escape her
+awfulness in his dream-haunted nightmares of her, he nevertheless
+was aware of the cosmic verity of sex that animated her and that
+made her own life of less value than the happiness of her lover
+with whom she hoped to mate.  Juliet or Balatta?  Where was the
+intrinsic difference?  The soft and tender product of ultra-
+civilization, or her bestial prototype of a hundred thousand years
+before her?--there was no difference.
+
+Bassett was a scientist first, a humanist afterward.  In the
+jungle-heart of Guadalcanal he put the affair to the test, as in
+the laboratory he would have put to the test any chemical reaction.
+He increased his feigned ardour for the bushwoman, at the same time
+increasing the imperiousness of his will of desire over her to be
+led to look upon the Red One face to face.  It was the old story,
+he recognized, that the woman must pay, and it occurred when the
+two of them, one day, were catching the unclassified and unnamed
+little black fish, an inch long, half-eel and half-scaled, rotund
+with salmon-golden roe, that frequented the fresh water, and that
+were esteemed, raw and whole, fresh or putrid, a perfect delicacy.
+Prone in the muck of the decaying jungle-floor, Balatta threw
+herself, clutching his ankles with her hands kissing his feet and
+making slubbery noises that chilled his backbone up and down again.
+She begged him to kill her rather than exact this ultimate love-
+payment.  She told him of the penalty of breaking the taboo of the
+Red One--a week of torture, living, the details of which she
+yammered out from her face in the mire until he realized that he
+was yet a tyro in knowledge of the frightfulness the human was
+capable of wreaking on the human.
+
+Yet did Bassett insist on having his man's will satisfied, at the
+woman's risk, that he might solve the mystery of the Red One's
+singing, though she should die long and horribly and screaming.
+And Balatta, being mere woman, yielded.  She led him into the
+forbidden quadrant.  An abrupt mountain, shouldering in from the
+north to meet a similar intrusion from the south, tormented the
+stream in which they had fished into a deep and gloomy gorge.
+After a mile along the gorge, the way plunged sharply upward until
+they crossed a saddle of raw limestone which attracted his
+geologist's eye.  Still climbing, although he paused often from
+sheer physical weakness, they scaled forest-clad heights until they
+emerged on a naked mesa or tableland.  Bassett recognized the stuff
+of its composition as black volcanic sand, and knew that a pocket
+magnet could have captured a full load of the sharply angular
+grains he trod upon.
+
+And then holding Balatta by the hand and leading her onward, he
+came to it--a tremendous pit, obviously artificial, in the heart of
+the plateau.  Old history, the South Seas Sailing Directions,
+scores of remembered data and connotations swift and furious,
+surged through his brain.  It was Mendana who had discovered the
+islands and named them Solomon's, believing that he had found that
+monarch's fabled mines.  They had laughed at the old navigator's
+child-like credulity; and yet here stood himself, Bassett, on the
+rim of an excavation for all the world like the diamond pits of
+South Africa.
+
+But no diamond this that he gazed down upon.  Rather was it a
+pearl, with the depth of iridescence of a pearl; but of a size all
+pearls of earth and time, welded into one, could not have totalled;
+and of a colour undreamed of in any pearl, or of anything else, for
+that matter, for it was the colour of the Red One.  And the Red One
+himself Bassett knew it to be on the instant.  A perfect sphere,
+full two hundred feet in diameter, the top of it was a hundred feet
+below the level of the rim.  He likened the colour quality of it to
+lacquer.  Indeed, he took it to be some sort of lacquer, applied by
+man, but a lacquer too marvellously clever to have been
+manufactured by the bush-folk.  Brighter than bright cherry-red,
+its richness of colour was as if it were red builded upon red.  It
+glowed and iridesced in the sunlight as if gleaming up from
+underlay under underlay of red.
+
+In vain Balatta strove to dissuade him from descending.  She threw
+herself in the dirt; but, when he continued down the trail that
+spiralled the pit-wall, she followed, cringing and whimpering her
+terror.  That the red sphere had been dug out as a precious thing,
+was patent.  Considering the paucity of members of the federated
+twelve villages and their primitive tools and methods, Bassett knew
+that the toil of a myriad generations could scarcely have made that
+enormous excavation.
+
+He found the pit bottom carpeted with human bones, among which,
+battered and defaced, lay village gods of wood and stone.  Some,
+covered with obscene totemic figures and designs, were carved from
+solid tree trunks forty or fifty feet in length.  He noted the
+absence of the shark and turtle gods, so common among the shore
+villages, and was amazed at the constant recurrence of the helmet
+motive.  What did these jungle savages of the dark heart of
+Guadalcanal know of helmets?  Had Mendana's men-at-arms worn
+helmets and penetrated here centuries before?  And if not, then
+whence had the bush-folk caught the motive?
+
+Advancing over the litter of gods and bones, Balatta whimpering at
+his heels, Bassett entered the shadow of the Red One and passed on
+under its gigantic overhang until he touched it with his finger-
+tips.  No lacquer that.  Nor was the surface smooth as it should
+have been in the case of lacquer.  On the contrary, it was
+corrugated and pitted, with here and there patches that showed
+signs of heat and fusing.  Also, the substance of it was metal,
+though unlike any metal, or combination of metals, he had ever
+known.  As for the colour itself, he decided it to be no
+application.  It was the intrinsic colour of the metal itself.
+
+He moved his finger-tips, which up to that had merely rested, along
+the surface, and felt the whole gigantic sphere quicken and live
+and respond.  It was incredible!  So light a touch on so vast a
+mass!  Yet did it quiver under the finger-tip caress in rhythmic
+vibrations that became whisperings and rustlings and mutterings of
+sound--but of sound so different; so elusively thin that it was
+shimmeringly sibilant; so mellow that it was maddening sweet,
+piping like an elfin horn, which last was just what Bassett decided
+would be like a peal from some bell of the gods reaching earthward
+from across space.
+
+He looked at Balatta with swift questioning; but the voice of the
+Red One he had evoked had flung her face downward and moaning among
+the bones.  He returned to contemplation of the prodigy.  Hollow it
+was, and of no metal known on earth, was his conclusion.  It was
+right-named by the ones of old-time as the Star-Born.  Only from
+the stars could it have come, and no thing of chance was it.  It
+was a creation of artifice and mind.  Such perfection of form, such
+hollowness that it certainly possessed, could not be the result of
+mere fortuitousness.  A child of intelligences, remote and
+unguessable, working corporally in metals, it indubitably was.  He
+stared at it in amaze, his brain a racing wild-fire of hypotheses
+to account for this far-journeyer who had adventured the night of
+space, threaded the stars, and now rose before him and above him,
+exhumed by patient anthropophagi, pitted and lacquered by its fiery
+bath in two atmospheres.
+
+But was the colour a lacquer of heat upon some familiar metal?  Or
+was it an intrinsic quality of the metal itself?  He thrust in the
+blue-point of his pocket-knife to test the constitution of the
+stuff.  Instantly the entire sphere burst into a mighty whispering,
+sharp with protest, almost twanging goldenly, if a whisper could
+possibly be considered to twang, rising higher, sinking deeper, the
+two extremes of the registry of sound threatening to complete the
+circle and coalesce into the bull-mouthed thundering he had so
+often heard beyond the taboo distance.
+
+Forgetful of safety, of his own life itself, entranced by the
+wonder of the unthinkable and unguessable thing, he raised his
+knife to strike heavily from a long stroke, but was prevented by
+Balatta.  She upreared on her own knees in an agony of terror,
+clasping his knees and supplicating him to desist.  In the
+intensity of her desire to impress him, she put her forearm between
+her teeth and sank them to the bone.
+
+He scarcely observed her act, although he yielded automatically to
+his gentler instincts and withheld the knife-hack.  To him, human
+life had dwarfed to microscopic proportions before this colossal
+portent of higher life from within the distances of the sidereal
+universe.  As had she been a dog, he kicked the ugly little
+bushwoman to her feet and compelled her to start with him on an
+encirclement of the base.  Part way around, he encountered horrors.
+Even, among the others, did he recognize the sun-shrivelled remnant
+of the nine-years girl who had accidentally broken Chief Vngngn's
+personality taboo.  And, among what was left of these that had
+passed, he encountered what was left of one who had not yet passed.
+Truly had the bush-folk named themselves into the name of the Red
+One, seeing in him their own image which they strove to placate and
+please with such red offerings.
+
+Farther around, always treading the bones and images of humans and
+gods that constituted the floor of this ancient charnel-house of
+sacrifice, he came upon the device by which the Red One was made to
+send his call singing thunderingly across the jungle-belts and
+grass-lands to the far beach of Ringmanu.  Simple and primitive was
+it as was the Red One's consummate artifice.  A great king-post,
+half a hundred feet in length, seasoned by centuries of
+superstitious care, carven into dynasties of gods, each
+superimposed, each helmeted, each seated in the open mouth of a
+crocodile, was slung by ropes, twisted of climbing vegetable
+parasites, from the apex of a tripod of three great forest trunks,
+themselves carved into grinning and grotesque adumbrations of man's
+modern concepts of art and god.  From the striker king-post, were
+suspended ropes of climbers to which men could apply their strength
+and direction.  Like a battering ram, this king-post could be
+driven end-onward against the mighty red-iridescent sphere.
+
+Here was where Ngurn officiated and functioned religiously for
+himself and the twelve tribes under him.  Bassett laughed aloud,
+almost with madness, at the thought of this wonderful messenger,
+winged with intelligence across space, to fall into a bushman
+stronghold and be worshipped by ape-like, man-eating and head-
+hunting savages.  It was as if God's World had fallen into the muck
+mire of the abyss underlying the bottom of hell; as if Jehovah's
+Commandments had been presented on carved stone to the monkeys of
+the monkey cage at the Zoo; as if the Sermon on the Mount had been
+preached in a roaring bedlam of lunatics.
+
+
+The slow weeks passed.  The nights, by election, Bassett spent on
+the ashen floor of the devil-devil house, beneath the ever-
+swinging, slow-curing heads.  His reason for this was that it was
+taboo to the lesser sex of woman, and therefore, a refuge for him
+from Balatta, who grew more persecutingly and perilously loverly as
+the Southern Cross rode higher in the sky and marked the imminence
+of her nuptials.  His days Bassett spent in a hammock swung under
+the shade of the great breadfruit tree before the devil-devil
+house.  There were breaks in this programme, when, in the comas of
+his devastating fever-attacks, he lay for days and nights in the
+house of heads.  Ever he struggled to combat the fever, to live, to
+continue to live, to grow strong and stronger against the day when
+he would be strong enough to dare the grass-lands and the belted
+jungle beyond, and win to the beach, and to some labour-recruiting,
+black-birding ketch or schooner, and on to civilization and the men
+of civilization, to whom he could give news of the message from
+other worlds that lay, darkly worshipped by beastmen, in the black
+heart of Guadalcanal's midmost centre.
+
+On the other nights, lying late under the breadfruit tree, Bassett
+spent long hours watching the slow setting of the western stars
+beyond the black wall of jungle where it had been thrust back by
+the clearing for the village.  Possessed of more than a cursory
+knowledge of astronomy, he took a sick man's pleasure in
+speculating as to the dwellers on the unseen worlds of those
+incredibly remote suns, to haunt whose houses of light, life came
+forth, a shy visitant, from the rayless crypts of matter.  He could
+no more apprehend limits to time than bounds to space.  No
+subversive radium speculations had shaken his steady scientific
+faith in the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of
+matter.  Always and forever must there have been stars.  And
+surely, in that cosmic ferment, all must be comparatively alike,
+comparatively of the same substance, or substances, save for the
+freaks of the ferment.  All must obey, or compose, the same laws
+that ran without infraction through the entire experience of man.
+Therefore, he argued and agreed, must worlds and life be appanages
+to all the suns as they were appanages to the particular of his own
+solar system.
+
+Even as he lay here, under the breadfruit tree, an intelligence
+that stared across the starry gulfs, so must all the universe be
+exposed to the ceaseless scrutiny of innumerable eyes, like his,
+though grantedly different, with behind them, by the same token,
+intelligences that questioned and sought the meaning and the
+construction of the whole.  So reasoning, he felt his soul go forth
+in kinship with that august company, that multitude whose gaze was
+forever upon the arras of infinity.
+
+Who were they, what were they, those far distant and superior ones
+who had bridged the sky with their gigantic, red-iridescent,
+heaven-singing message?  Surely, and long since, had they, too,
+trod the path on which man had so recently, by the calendar of the
+cosmos, set his feet.  And to be able to send a message across the
+pit of space, surely they had reached those heights to which man,
+in tears and travail and bloody sweat, in darkness and confusion of
+many counsels, was so slowly struggling.  And what were they on
+their heights?  Had they won Brotherhood?  Or had they learned that
+the law of love imposed the penalty of weakness and decay?  Was
+strife, life?  Was the rule of all the universe the pitiless rule
+of natural selection?  And, and most immediately and poignantly,
+were their far conclusions, their long-won wisdoms, shut even then
+in the huge, metallic heart of the Red One, waiting for the first
+earth-man to read?  Of one thing he was certain:  No drop of red
+dew shaken from the lion-mane of some sun in torment, was the
+sounding sphere.  It was of design, not chance, and it contained
+the speech and wisdom of the stars.
+
+What engines and elements and mastered forces, what lore and
+mysteries and destiny-controls, might be there!  Undoubtedly, since
+so much could be enclosed in so little a thing as the foundation
+stone of a public building, this enormous sphere should contain
+vast histories, profounds of research achieved beyond man's wildest
+guesses, laws and formulae that, easily mastered, would make man's
+life on earth, individual and collective, spring up from its
+present mire to inconceivable heights of purity and power.  It was
+Time's greatest gift to blindfold, insatiable, and sky-aspiring
+man.  And to him, Bassett, had been vouchsafed the lordly fortune
+to be the first to receive this message from man's interstellar
+kin!
+
+ No white man, much less no outland man of the other bush-tribes,
+had gazed upon the Red One and lived.  Such the law expounded by
+Ngurn to Bassett.  There was such a thing as blood brotherhood.
+Bassett, in return, had often argued in the past.  But Ngurn had
+stated solemnly no.  Even the blood brotherhood was outside the
+favour of the Red One.  Only a man born within the tribe could look
+upon the Red One and live.  But now, his guilty secret known only
+to Balatta, whose fear of immolation before the Red One fast-sealed
+her lips, the situation was different.  What he had to do was to
+recover from the abominable fevers that weakened him, and gain to
+civilization.  Then would he lead an expedition back, and, although
+the entire population of Guadalcanal he destroyed, extract from the
+heart of the Red One the message of the world from other worlds.
+
+But Bassett's relapses grew more frequent, his brief convalescences
+less and less vigorous, his periods of coma longer, until he came
+to know, beyond the last promptings of the optimism inherent in so
+tremendous a constitution as his own, that he would never live to
+cross the grass lands, perforate the perilous coast jungle, and
+reach the sea.  He faded as the Southern Cross rose higher in the
+sky, till even Balatta knew that he would be dead ere the nuptial
+date determined by his taboo.  Ngurn made pilgrimage personally and
+gathered the smoke materials for the curing of Bassett's head, and
+to him made proud announcement and exhibition of the artistic
+perfectness of his intention when Bassett should be dead.  As for
+himself, Bassett was not shocked.  Too long and too deeply had life
+ebbed down in him to bite him with fear of its impending
+extinction.  He continued to persist, alternating periods of
+unconsciousness with periods of semi-consciousness, dreamy and
+unreal, in which he idly wondered whether he had ever truly beheld
+the Red One or whether it was a nightmare fancy of delirium.
+
+Came the day when all mists and cob-webs dissolved, when he found
+his brain clear as a bell, and took just appraisement of his body's
+weakness.  Neither hand nor foot could he lift.  So little control
+of his body did he have, that he was scarcely aware of possessing
+one.  Lightly indeed his flesh sat upon his soul, and his soul, in
+its briefness of clarity, knew by its very clarity that the black
+of cessation was near.  He knew the end was close; knew that in all
+truth he had with his eyes beheld the Red One, the messenger
+between the worlds; knew that he would never live to carry that
+message to the world--that message, for aught to the contrary,
+which might already have waited man's hearing in the heart of
+Guadalcanal for ten thousand years.  And Bassett stirred with
+resolve, calling Ngurn to him, out under the shade of the
+breadfruit tree, and with the old devil-devil doctor discussing the
+terms and arrangements of his last life effort, his final adventure
+in the quick of the flesh.
+
+"I know the law, O Ngurn," he concluded the matter.  "Whoso is not
+of the folk may not look upon the Red One and live.  I shall not
+live anyway.  Your young men shall carry me before the face of the
+Red One, and I shall look upon him, and hear his voice, and
+thereupon die, under your hand, O Ngurn.  Thus will the three
+things be satisfied:  the law, my desire, and your quicker
+possession of my head for which all your preparations wait."
+
+To which Ngurn consented, adding:
+
+"It is better so.  A sick man who cannot get well is foolish to
+live on for so little a while.  Also is it better for the living
+that he should go.  You have been much in the way of late.  Not but
+what it was good for me to talk to such a wise one.  But for moons
+of days we have held little talk.  Instead, you have taken up room
+in the house of heads, making noises like a dying pig, or talking
+much and loudly in your own language which I do not understand.
+This has been a confusion to me, for I like to think on the great
+things of the light and dark as I turn the heads in the smoke.
+Your much noise has thus been a disturbance to the long-learning
+and hatching of the final wisdom that will be mine before I die.
+As for you, upon whom the dark has already brooded, it is well that
+you die now.  And I promise you, in the long days to come when I
+turn your head in the smoke, no man of the tribe shall come in to
+disturb us.  And I will tell you many secrets, for I am an old man
+and very wise, and I shall be adding wisdom to wisdom as I turn
+your head in the smoke."
+
+So a litter was made, and, borne on the shoulders of half a dozen
+of the men, Bassett departed on the last little adventure that was
+to cap the total adventure, for him, of living.  With a body of
+which he was scarcely aware, for even the pain had been exhausted
+out of it, and with a bright clear brain that accommodated him to a
+quiet ecstasy of sheer lucidness of thought, he lay back on the
+lurching litter and watched the fading of the passing world,
+beholding for the last time the breadfruit tree before the devil-
+devil house, the dim day beneath the matted jungle roof, the gloomy
+gorge between the shouldering mountains, the saddle of raw
+limestone, and the mesa of black volcanic sand.
+
+Down the spiral path of the pit they bore him, encircling the
+sheening, glowing Red One that seemed ever imminent to iridesce
+from colour and light into sweet singing and thunder.  And over
+bones and logs of immolated men and gods they bore him, past the
+horrors of other immolated ones that yet lived, to the three-king-
+post tripod and the huge king-post striker.
+
+Here Bassett, helped by Ngurn and Balatta, weakly sat up, swaying
+weakly from the hips, and with clear, unfaltering, all-seeing eyes
+gazed upon the Red One.
+
+"Once, O Ngurn," he said, not taking his eyes from the sheening,
+vibrating surface whereon and wherein all the shades of cherry-red
+played unceasingly, ever a-quiver to change into sound, to become
+silken rustlings, silvery whisperings, golden thrummings of cords,
+velvet pipings of elfland, mellow distances of thunderings.
+
+"I wait," Ngurn prompted after a long pause, the long-handled
+tomahawk unassumingly ready in his hand.
+
+"Once, O Ngurn," Bassett repeated, "let the Red One speak so that I
+may see it speak as well as hear it.  Then strike, thus, when I
+raise my hand; for, when I raise my hand, I shall drop my head
+forward and make place for the stroke at the base of my neck.  But,
+O Ngurn, I, who am about to pass out of the light of day for ever,
+would like to pass with the wonder-voice of the Red One singing
+greatly in my ears."
+
+"And I promise you that never will a head be so well cured as
+yours," Ngurn assured him, at the same time signalling the
+tribesmen to man the propelling ropes suspended from the king-post
+striker.  "Your head shall be my greatest piece of work in the
+curing of heads."
+
+Bassett smiled quietly to the old one's conceit, as the great
+carved log, drawn back through two-score feet of space, was
+released.  The next moment he was lost in ecstasy at the abrupt and
+thunderous liberation of sound.  But such thunder!  Mellow it was
+with preciousness of all sounding metals.  Archangels spoke in it;
+it was magnificently beautiful before all other sounds; it was
+invested with the intelligence of supermen of planets of other
+suns; it was the voice of God, seducing and commanding to be heard.
+And--the everlasting miracle of that interstellar metal! Bassett,
+with his own eyes, saw colour and colours transform into sound till
+the whole visible surface of the vast sphere was a-crawl and
+titillant and vaporous with what he could not tell was colour or
+was sound.  In that moment the interstices of matter were his, and
+the interfusings and intermating transfusings of matter and force.
+
+Time passed.  At the last Bassett was brought back from his ecstasy
+by an impatient movement of Ngurn.  He had quite forgotten the old
+devil-devil one.  A quick flash of fancy brought a husky chuckle
+into Bassett's throat.  His shot-gun lay beside him in the litter.
+All he had to do, muzzle to head, was to press the trigger and blow
+his head into nothingness.
+
+But why cheat him? was Bassett's next thought.  Head-hunting,
+cannibal beast of a human that was as much ape as human,
+nevertheless Old Ngurn had, according to his lights, played squarer
+than square.  Ngurn was in himself a forerunner of ethics and
+contract, of consideration, and gentleness in man.  No, Bassett
+decided; it would be a ghastly pity and an act of dishonour to
+cheat the old fellow at the last.  His head was Ngurn's, and
+Ngurn's head to cure it would be.
+
+And Bassett, raising his hand in signal, bending forward his head
+as agreed so as to expose cleanly the articulation to his taut
+spinal cord, forgot Balatta, who was merely a woman, a woman merely
+and only and undesired.  He knew, without seeing, when the razor-
+edged hatchet rose in the air behind him.  And for that instant,
+ere the end, there fell upon Bassett the shadows of the Unknown, a
+sense of impending marvel of the rending of walls before the
+imaginable.  Almost, when he knew the blow had started and just ere
+the edge of steel bit the flesh and nerves it seemed that he gazed
+upon the serene face of the Medusa, Truth--And, simultaneous with
+the bite of the steel on the onrush of the dark, in a flashing
+instant of fancy, he saw the vision of his head turning slowly,
+always turning, in the devil-devil house beside the breadfruit
+tree.
+
+
+Waikiki, Honolulu,
+May 22, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+STORY:  THE HUSSY
+
+
+
+
+There are some stories that have to be true--the sort that cannot
+be fabricated by a ready fiction-reckoner.  And by the same token
+there are some men with stories to tell who cannot be doubted.
+Such a man was Julian Jones.  Although I doubt if the average
+reader of this will believe the story Julian Jones told me.
+Nevertheless I believe it.  So thoroughly am I convinced of its
+verity that I am willing, nay, eager, to invest capital in the
+enterprise and embark personally on the adventure to a far land.
+
+It was in the Australian Building at the Panama Pacific Exposition
+that I met him.  I was standing before an exhibit of facsimiles of
+the record nuggets which had been discovered in the goldfields of
+the Antipodes.  Knobbed, misshapen and massive, it was as difficult
+to believe that they were not real gold as it was to believe the
+accompanying statistics of their weights and values.
+
+"That's what those kangaroo-hunters call a nugget," boomed over my
+shoulder directly at the largest of the specimens.
+
+I turned and looked up into the dim blue eyes of Julian Jones.  I
+looked up, for he stood something like six feet four inches in
+height.  His hair, a wispy, sandy yellow, seemed as dimmed and
+faded as his eyes.  It may have been the sun which had washed out
+his colouring; at least his face bore the evidence of a prodigious
+and ardent sun-burn which had long since faded to yellow.  As his
+eyes turned from the exhibit and focussed on mine I noted a queer
+look in them as of one who vainly tries to recall some fact of
+supreme importance.
+
+"What's the matter with it as a nugget?"  I demanded.
+
+The remote, indwelling expression went out of his eyes as he boomed
+
+"Why, its size."
+
+"It does seem large," I admitted.  "But there's no doubt it's
+authentic.  The Australian Government would scarcely dare--"
+
+"Large!" he interrupted, with a sniff and a sneer.
+
+"Largest ever discovered--" I started on.
+
+"Ever discovered!"  His dim eyes smouldered hotly as he proceeded.
+"Do you think that every lump of gold ever discovered has got into
+the newspapers and encyclopedias?"
+
+"Well," I replied judicially, "if there's one that hasn't, I don't
+see how we're to know about it.  If a really big nugget, or nugget-
+finder, elects to blush unseen--"
+
+"But it didn't," he broke in quickly.  "I saw it with my own eyes,
+and, besides, I'm too tanned to blush anyway.  I'm a railroad man
+and I've been in the tropics a lot.  Why, I used to be the colour
+of mahogany--real old mahogany, and have been taken for a blue-eyed
+Spaniard more than once--"
+
+It was my turn to interrupt, and I did.
+
+"Was that nugget bigger than those in there, Mr.--er--?"
+
+"Jones, Julian Jones is my name."
+
+He dug into an inner pocket and produced an envelope addressed to
+such a person, care of General Delivery, San Francisco; and I, in
+turn, presented him with my card.
+
+"Pleased to know you, sir," he said, extending his hand, his voice
+booming as if accustomed to loud noises or wide spaces.  "Of course
+I've heard of you, seen your picture in the papers, and all that,
+and, though I say it that shouldn't, I want to say that I didn't
+care a rap about those articles you wrote on Mexico.  You're wrong,
+all wrong.  You make the mistake of all Gringos in thinking a
+Mexican is a white man.  He ain't.  None of them ain't--Greasers,
+Spiggoties, Latin-Americans and all the rest of the cattle.  Why,
+sir, they don't think like we think, or reason, or act.  Even their
+multiplication table is different.  You think seven times seven is
+forty-nine; but not them.  They work it out different.  And white
+isn't white to them, either.  Let me give you an example.  Buying
+coffee retail for house-keeping in one-pound or ten-pound lots--"
+
+"How big was that nugget you referred to?" I queried firmly.  "As
+big as the biggest of those?"
+
+"Bigger," he said quietly.  "Bigger than the whole blamed exhibit
+of them put together, and then some."  He paused and regarded me
+with a steadfast gaze.  "I don't see no reason why I shouldn't go
+into the matter with you.  You've got a reputation a man ought to
+be able to trust, and I've read you've done some tall skylarking
+yourself in out-of-the-way places.  I've been browsing around with
+an eye open for some one to go in with me on the proposition."
+
+"You can trust me," I said.
+
+And here I am, blazing out into print with the whole story just as
+he told it to me as we sat on a bench by the lagoon before the
+Palace of Fine Arts with the cries of the sea gulls in our ears.
+Well, he should have kept his appointment with me.  But I
+anticipate.
+
+As we started to leave the building and hunt for a seat, a small
+woman, possibly thirty years of age, with a washed-out complexion
+of the farmer's wife sort, darted up to him in a bird-like way, for
+all the world like the darting veering gulls over our heads and
+fastened herself to his arm with the accuracy and dispatch and
+inevitableness of a piece of machinery.
+
+"There you go!" she shrilled.  "A-trottin' right off and never
+givin' me a thought."
+
+I was formally introduced to her.  It was patent that she had never
+heard of me, and she surveyed me bleakly with shrewd black eyes,
+set close together and as beady and restless as a bird's.
+
+"You ain't goin' to tell him about that hussy?" she complained.
+
+"Well, now, Sarah, this is business, you see," he argued
+plaintively.  "I've been lookin' for a likely man this long while,
+and now that he's shown up it seems to me I got a right to give him
+the hang of what happened."
+
+The small woman made no reply, but set her thin lips in a needle-
+like line.  She gazed straight before her at the Tower of Jewels
+with so austere an expression that no glint of refracted sunlight
+could soften it.  We proceeded slowly to the lagoon, managed to
+obtain an unoccupied seat, and sat down with mutual sighs of relief
+as we released our weights from our tortured sightseeing feet.
+
+"One does get so mortal weary," asserted the small woman, almost
+defiantly.
+
+Two swans waddled up from the mirroring water and investigated us.
+When their suspicions of our niggardliness or lack of peanuts had
+been confirmed, Jones half-turned his back on his life-partner and
+gave me his story.
+
+"Ever been in Ecuador?  Then take my advice--and don't.  Though I
+take that back, for you and me might be hitting it for there
+together if you can rustle up the faith in me and the backbone in
+yourself for the trip.  Well, anyway, it ain't so many years ago
+that I came ambling in there on a rusty, foul-bottomed, tramp
+collier from Australia, forty-three days from land to land.  Seven
+knots was her speed when everything favoured, and we'd had a two
+weeks' gale to the north'ard of New Zealand, and broke our engines
+down for two days off Pitcairn Island.
+
+"I was no sailor on her.  I'm a locomotive engineer.  But I'd made
+friends with the skipper at Newcastle an' come along as his guest
+for as far as Guayaquil.  You see, I'd heard wages was 'way up on
+the American railroad runnin' from that place over the Andes to
+Quito.  Now Guayaquil--"
+
+"Is a fever-hole," I interpolated.
+
+Julian Jones nodded.
+
+"Thomas Nast died there of it within a month after he landed.--He
+was our great American cartoonist," I added.
+
+"Don't know him," Julian Jones said shortly.  "But I do know he
+wasn't the first to pass out by a long shot.  Why, look you the way
+I found it.  The pilot grounds is sixty miles down the river.
+'How's the fever?' said I to the pilot who came aboard in the early
+morning.  'See that Hamburg barque,' said he, pointing to a sizable
+ship at anchor.  'Captain and fourteen men dead of it already, and
+the cook and two men dying right now, and they're the last left of
+her.'
+
+"And by jinks he told the truth.  And right then they were dying
+forty a day in Guayaquil of Yellow Jack.  But that was nothing, as
+I was to find out.  Bubonic plague and small-pox were raging, while
+dysentery and pneumonia were reducing the population, and the
+railroad was raging worst of all.  I mean that.  For them that
+insisted in riding on it, it was more dangerous than all the other
+diseases put together.
+
+"When we dropped anchor off Guayaquil half a dozen skippers from
+other steamers came on board to warn our skipper not to let any of
+his crew or officers go ashore except the ones he wanted to lose.
+A launch came off for me from Duran, which is on the other side of
+the river and is the terminal of the railroad.  And it brought off
+a man that soared up the gangway three jumps at a time he was that
+eager to get aboard.  When he hit the deck he hadn't time to speak
+to any of us.  He just leaned out over the rail and shook his fist
+at Duran and shouted:  'I beat you to it!  I beat you to it!'
+
+"'Who'd you beat to it, friend?' I asked.  'The railroad,' he said,
+as he unbuckled the straps and took off a big '44 Colt's automatic
+from where he wore it handy on his left side under his coat, 'I
+staved as long as I agreed--three months--and it didn't get me.  I
+was a conductor.'
+
+"And that was the railroad I was to work for.  All of which was
+nothing to what he told me in the next few minutes.  The road ran
+from sea level at Duran up to twelve thousand feet on Chimborazo
+and down to ten thousand at Quito on the other side the range.  And
+it was so dangerous that the trains didn't run nights.  The through
+passengers had to get off and sleep in the towns at night while the
+train waited for daylight.  And each train carried a guard of
+Ecuadoriano soldiers which was the most dangerous of all.  They
+were supposed to protect the train crews, but whenever trouble
+started they unlimbered their rifles and joined the mob.  You see,
+whenever a train wreck occurred, the first cry of the spiggoties
+was 'Kill the Gringos!'  They always did that, and proceeded to
+kill the train crew and whatever chance Gringo passengers that'd
+escaped being killed in the accident.  Which is their kind of
+arithmetic, which I told you a while back as being different from
+ours.
+
+"Shucks!  Before the day was out I was to find out for myself that
+that ex-conductor wasn't lying.  It was over at Duran.  I was to
+take my run on the first division out to Quito, for which place I
+was to start next morning--only one through train running every
+twenty-four hours.  It was the afternoon of my first day, along
+about four o'clock, when the boilers of the Governor Hancock
+exploded and she sank in sixty feet of water alongside the dock.
+She was the big ferry boat that carried the railroad passengers
+across the river to Guayaquil.  It was a bad accident, but it was
+the cause of worse that followed.  By half-past four, big
+trainloads began to arrive.  It was a feast day and they'd run an
+excursion up country but of Guayaquil, and this was the crowd
+coming back.
+
+"And the crowd--there was five thousand of them--wanted to get
+ferried across, and the ferry was at the bottom of the river, which
+wasn't our fault.  But by the Spiggoty arithmetic, it was.  'Kill
+the Gringos!' shouts one of them.  And right there the beans were
+spilled.  Most of us got away by the skin of our teeth.  I raced on
+the heels of the Master Mechanic, carrying one of his babies for
+him, for the locomotives that was just pulling out.  You see, way
+down there away from everywhere they just got to save their
+locomotives in times of trouble, because, without them, a railroad
+can't be run.  Half a dozen American wives and as many children
+were crouching on the cab floors along with the rest of us when we
+pulled out; and the Ecuadoriano soldiers, who should have been
+protecting our lives and property, turned loose with their rifles
+and must have given us all of a thousand rounds before we got out
+of range.
+
+"We camped up country and didn't come back to clean up until next
+day.  It was some cleaning.  Every flat-car, box-car, coach,
+asthmatic switch engine, and even hand-car that mob of Spiggoties
+had shoved off the dock into sixty feet of water on top of the
+Governor Hancock.  They'd burnt the round house, set fire to the
+coal bunkers, and made a scandal of the repair shops.  Oh, yes, and
+there were three of our fellows they'd got that we had to bury
+mighty quick.  It's hot weather all the time down there."
+
+Julian Jones came to a full pause and over his shoulder studied the
+straight-before-her gaze and forbidding expression of his wife's
+face.
+
+"I ain't forgotten the nugget," he assured me.
+
+"Nor the hussy," the little woman snapped, apparently at the mud-
+hens paddling on the surface of the lagoon.
+
+"I've been travelling toward the nugget right along--"
+
+"There was never no reason for you to stay in that dangerous
+country," his wife snapped in on him.
+
+"Now, Sarah," he appealed.  "I was working for you right along."
+And to me he explained:  "The risk was big, but so was the pay.
+Some months I earned as high as five hundred gold.  And here was
+Sarah waiting for me back in Nebraska--"
+
+"An' us engaged two years," she complained to the Tower of Jewels.
+
+"--What of the strike, and me being blacklisted, and getting
+typhoid down in Australia, and everything," he went on.  "And luck
+was with me on that railroad.  Why, I saw fellows fresh from the
+States pass out, some of them not a week on their first run.  If
+the diseases and the railroad didn't get them, then it was the
+Spiggoties got them.  But it just wasn't my fate, even that time I
+rode my engine down to the bottom of a forty-foot washout.  I lost
+my fireman; and the conductor and the Superintendent of Rolling
+Stock (who happened to be running down to Duran to meet his bride)
+had their heads knifed off by the Spiggoties and paraded around on
+poles.  But I lay snug as a bug under a couple of feet of tender
+coal, and they thought I'd headed for tall timber--lay there a day
+and a night till the excitement cooled down.  Yes, I was lucky.
+The worst that happened to me was I caught a cold once, and another
+time had a carbuncle.  But the other fellows!  They died like
+flies, what of Yellow Jack, pneumonia, the Spiggoties, and the
+railroad.  The trouble was I didn't have much chance to pal with
+them.  No sooner'd I get some intimate with one of them he'd up and
+die--all but a fireman named Andrews, and he went loco for keeps.
+
+"I made good on my job from the first, and lived in Quito in a
+'dobe house with whacking big Spanish tiles on the roof that I'd
+rented.  And I never had much trouble with the Spiggoties, what of
+letting them sneak free rides in the tender or on the cowcatcher.
+Me throw them off?  Never!  I took notice, when Jack Harris put off
+a bunch of them, that I attended his funeral muy pronto--"
+
+"Speak English," the little woman beside him snapped.
+
+"Sarah just can't bear to tolerate me speaking Spanish," he
+apologized.  "It gets so on her nerves that I promised not to.
+Well, as I was saying, the goose hung high and everything was going
+hunky-dory, and I was piling up my wages to come north to Nebraska
+and marry Sarah, when I run on to Vahna--"
+
+"The hussy!" Sarah hissed.
+
+"Now, Sarah," her towering giant of a husband begged, "I just got
+to mention her or I can't tell about the nugget.--It was one night
+when I was taking a locomotive--no train--down to Amato, about
+thirty miles from Quito.  Seth Manners was my fireman.  I was
+breaking him in to engineer for himself, and I was letting him run
+the locomotive while I sat up in his seat meditating about Sarah
+here.  I'd just got a letter from her, begging as usual for me to
+come home and hinting as usual about the dangers of an unmarried
+man like me running around loose in a country full of senoritas and
+fandangos.  Lord!  If she could only a-seen them.  Positive
+frights, that's what they are, their faces painted white as corpses
+and their lips red as--as some of the train wrecks I've helped
+clean up.
+
+"It was a lovely April night, not a breath of wind, and a
+tremendous big moon shining right over the top of Chimborazo.--Some
+mountain that.  The railroad skirted it twelve thousand feet above
+sea level, and the top of it ten thousand feet higher than that.
+
+"Mebbe I was drowsing, with Seth running the engine; but he slammed
+on the brakes so sudden hard that I darn near went through the cab
+window.
+
+"'What the--' I started to yell, and 'Holy hell,' Seth says, as
+both of us looked at what was on the track.  And I agreed with Seth
+entirely in his remark.  It was an Indian girl--and take it from
+me, Indians ain't Spiggoties by any manner of means.  Seth had
+managed to fetch a stop within twenty feet of her, and us bowling
+down hill at that!  But the girl.  She--"
+
+I saw the form of Mrs. Julian Jones stiffen, although she kept her
+gaze fixed balefully upon two mud-hens that were prowling along the
+lagoon shallows below us.  "The hussy!" she hissed, once and
+implacably.  Jones had stopped at the sound, but went on
+immediately.
+
+"She was a tall girl, slim and slender, you know the kind, with
+black hair, remarkably long hanging, down loose behind her, as she
+stood there no more afraid than nothing, her arms spread out to
+stop the engine.  She was wearing a slimpsy sort of garment wrapped
+around her that wasn't cloth but ocelot skins, soft and dappled,
+and silky.  It was all she had on--"
+
+"The hussy!" breathed Mrs. Jones.
+
+But Mr. Jones went on, making believe that he was unaware of the
+interruption.
+
+"'Hell of a way to stop a locomotive,' I complained at Seth, as I
+climbed down on to the right of way.  I walked past our engine and
+up to the girl, and what do you think?  Her eyes were shut tight.
+She was trembling that violent that you would see it by the
+moonlight.  And she was barefoot, too.
+
+"'What's the row?' I said, none too gentle.  She gave a start,
+seemed to come out of her trance, and opened her eyes.  Say!  They
+were big and black and beautiful.  Believe me, she was some looker-
+-"
+
+"The hussy!"  At which hiss the two mud-hens veered away a few
+feet.  But Jones was getting himself in hand, and didn't even
+blink.
+
+"'What are you stopping this locomotive for?' I demanded in
+Spanish.  Nary an answer.  She stared at me, then at the snorting
+engine and then burst into tears, which you'll admit is uncommon
+behaviour for an Indian woman.
+
+"'If you try to get rides that way,' I slung at her in Spiggoty
+Spanish (which they tell me is some different from regular
+Spanish), 'you'll be taking one smeared all over our cowcatcher and
+headlight, and it'll be up to my fireman to scrape you off.'
+
+"My Spiggoty Spanish wasn't much to brag on, but I could see she
+understood, though she only shook her head and wouldn't speak.  But
+great Moses, she was some looker--"
+
+I glanced apprehensively at Mrs. Jones, who must have caught me out
+of the tail of her eye, for she muttered:  "If she hadn't been do
+you think he'd a-taken her into his house to live?"
+
+"Now hold on, Sarah," he protested.  "That ain't fair.  Besides,
+I'm telling this.--Next thing, Seth yells at me, 'Goin' to stay
+here all night?'
+
+"'Come on,' I said to the girl, 'and climb on board.  But next time
+you want a ride don't flag a locomotive between stations.'  She
+followed along; but when I got to the step and turned to give her a
+lift-up, she wasn't there.  I went forward again.  Not a sign of
+her.  Above and below was sheer cliff, and the track stretched
+ahead a hundred yards clear and empty.  And then I spotted her,
+crouched down right against the cowcatcher, that close I'd almost
+stepped on her.  If we'd started up, we'd have run over her in a
+second.  It was all so nonsensical, I never could make out her
+actions.  Maybe she was trying to suicide.  I grabbed her by the
+wrist and jerked her none too gentle to her feet.  And she came
+along all right.  Women do know when a man means business."
+
+I glanced from this Goliath to his little, bird-eyed spouse, and
+wondered if he had ever tried to mean business with her.
+
+"Seth kicked at first, but I boosted her into the cab and made her
+sit up beside me--"
+
+"And I suppose Seth was busy running the engine," Mrs. Jones
+observed.
+
+"I was breaking him in, wasn't I?"  Mr. Jones protested.  "So we
+made the run into Amato.  She'd never opened her mouth once, and no
+sooner'd the engine stopped than she'd jumped to the ground and was
+gone.  Just like that.  Not a thank you kindly.  Nothing.
+
+"But next morning when we came to pull out for Quito with a dozen
+flat cars loaded with rails, there she was in the cab waiting for
+us; and in the daylight I could see how much better a looker she
+was than the night before.
+
+"'Huh! she's adopted you,' Seth grins.  And it looked like it.  She
+just stood there and looked at me--at us--like a loving hound dog
+that you love, that you've caught with a string of sausages inside
+of him, and that just knows you ain't going to lift a hand to him.
+'Go chase yourself!' I told her pronto."  (Mrs. Jones her proximity
+noticeable with a wince at the Spanish word.)  "You see, Sarah, I'd
+no use for her, even at the start."
+
+Mrs. Jones stiffened.  Her lips moved soundlessly, but I knew to
+what syllables.
+
+"And what made it hardest was Seth jeering at me.  'You can't shake
+her that way,' he said.  'You saved her life--'  'I didn't,' I said
+sharply; 'it was you.'  'But she thinks you did, which is the same
+thing,' he came back at me.  'And now she belongs to you.  Custom
+of the country, as you ought to know.'"
+
+"Heathenish," said Mrs. Jones, and though her steady gaze was set
+upon the Tower of Jewels I knew she was making no reference to its
+architecture.
+
+"'She's come to do light housekeeping for you,' Seth grinned.  I
+let him rave, though afterwards I kept him throwing in the coal too
+fast to work his mouth very much.  Why, say, when I got to the spot
+where I picked her up, and stopped the train for her to get off,
+she just flopped down on her knees, got a hammerlock with her arms
+around my knees, and cried all over my shoes.  What was I to do?"
+
+With no perceptible movement that I was aware of, Mrs. Jones
+advertised her certitude of knowledge of what SHE would have done.
+
+"And the moment we pulled into Quito, she did what she'd done
+before--vanished.  Sarah never believes me when I say how relieved
+I felt to be quit of her.  But it was not to be.  I got to my 'dobe
+house and managed a cracking fine dinner my cook had ready for me.
+She was mostly Spiggoty and half Indian, and her name was Paloma.--
+Now, Sarah, haven't I told you she was older'n a grandmother, and
+looked more like a buzzard than a dove?  Why, I couldn't bear to
+eat with her around where I could look at her.  But she did make
+things comfortable, and she was some economical when it came to
+marketing.
+
+"That afternoon, after a big long siesta, what'd I find in the
+kitchen, just as much at home as if she belonged there, but that
+blamed Indian girl.  And old Paloma was squatting at the girl's
+feet and rubbing the girl's knees and legs like for rheumatism,
+which I knew the girl didn't have from the way I'd sized up the
+walk of her, and keeping time to the rubbing with a funny sort of
+gibberish chant.  And I let loose right there and then.  As Sarah
+knows, I never could a-bear women around the house--young,
+unmarried women, I mean.  But it was no go!  Old Paloma sided with
+the girl, and said if the girl went she went, too.  Also, she
+called me more kinds of a fool than the English language has
+accommodation for.  You'd like the Spanish lingo, Sarah, for
+expressing yourself in such ways, and you'd have liked old Paloma,
+too.  She was a good woman, though she didn't have any teeth and
+her face could kill a strong man's appetite in the cradle.
+
+"I gave in.  I had to.  Except for the excuse that she needed
+Vahna's help around the house (which she didn't at all), old Paloma
+never said why she stuck up for the girl.  Anyway, Vahna was a
+quiet thing, never in the way.  And she never gadded.  Just sat in-
+doors jabbering with Paloma and helping with the chores.  But I
+wasn't long in getting on to that she was afraid of something.  She
+would look up, that anxious it hurt, whenever anybody called, like
+some of the boys to have a gas or a game of pedro.  I tried to worm
+it out of Paloma what was worrying the girl, but all the old woman
+did was to look solemn and shake her head like all the devils in
+hell was liable to precipitate a visit on us.
+
+"And then one day Vahna had a visitor.  I'd just come in from a run
+and was passing the time of day with her--I had to be polite, even
+if she had butted in on me and come to live in my house for keeps--
+when I saw a queer expression come into her eyes.  In the doorway
+stood an Indian boy.  He looked like her, but was younger and
+slimmer.  She took him into the kitchen and they must have had a
+great palaver, for he didn't leave until after dark.  Inside the
+week he came back, but I missed him.  When I got home, Paloma put a
+fat nugget of gold into my hand, which Vahna had sent him for.  The
+blamed thing weighed all of two pounds and was worth more than five
+hundred dollars.  She explained that Vahna wanted me to take it to
+pay for her keep.  And I had to take it to keep peace in the house.
+
+"Then, after a long time, came another visitor.  We were sitting
+before the fire--"
+
+"Him and the hussy," quoth Mrs. Jones.
+
+"And Paloma," he added quickly.
+
+"Him and his cook and his light housekeeper sitting by the fire,"
+she amended.
+
+"Oh, I admit Vahna did like me a whole heap," he asserted
+recklessly, then modified with a pang of caution:  "A heap more
+than was good for her, seeing that I had no inclination her way.
+
+"Well, as I was saying, she had another visitor.  He was a lean,
+tall, white-headed old Indian, with a beak on him like an eagle.
+He walked right in without knocking.  Vahna gave a little cry that
+was half like a yelp and half like a gasp, and flumped down on her
+knees before me, pleading to me with deer's eyes and to him with
+the eyes of a deer about to be killed that don't want to be killed.
+Then, for a minute that seemed as long as a life-time, she and the
+old fellow glared at each other.  Paloma was the first to talk, in
+his own lingo, for he talked back to her.  But great Moses, if he
+wasn't the high and mighty one!  Paloma's old knees were shaking,
+and she cringed to him like a hound dog.  And all this in my own
+house!  I'd have thrown him out on his neck, only he was so old.
+
+"If the things he said to Vahna were as terrible as the way he
+looked!  Say!  He just spit words at her!  But Paloma kept
+whimpering and butting in, till something she said got across,
+because his face relaxed.  He condescended to give me the once over
+and fired some question at Vahna.  She hung her head, and looked
+foolish, and blushed, and then replied with a single word and a
+shake of the head.  And with that he just naturally turned on his
+heel and beat it.  I guess she'd said 'No.'
+
+"For some time after that Vahna used to fluster up whenever she saw
+me.  Then she took to the kitchen for a spell.  But after a long
+time she began hanging around the big room again.  She was still
+mighty shy, but she'd keep on following me about with those big
+eyes of hers--"
+
+"The hussy!" I heard plainly.  But Julian Jones and I were pretty
+well used to it by this time.
+
+"I don't mind saying that I was getting some interested myself--oh,
+not in the way Sarah never lets up letting me know she thinks.
+That two-pound nugget was what had me going.  If Vahna'd put me
+wise to where it came from, I could say good-bye to railroading and
+hit the high places for Nebraska and Sarah.
+
+"And then the beans were spilled . . . by accident.  Come a letter
+from Wisconsin.  My Aunt Eliza 'd died and up and left me her big
+farm.  I let out a whoop when I read it; but I could have canned my
+joy, for I was jobbed out of it by the courts and lawyers
+afterward--not a cent to me, and I'm still paying 'm in
+instalments.
+
+"But I didn't know, then; and I prepared to pull back to God's
+country.  Paloma got sore, and Vahna got the weeps.  'Don't go!
+Don't go!'  That was her song.  But I gave notice on my job, and
+wrote a letter to Sarah here--didn't I, Sarah?
+
+"That night, sitting by the fire like at a funeral, Vahna really
+loosened up for the first time.
+
+"'Don't go,' she says to me, with old Paloma nodding agreement with
+her.  'I'll show you where my brother got the nugget, if you don't
+go.'  'Too late,' said I.  And I told her why.
+
+"And told her about me waiting for you back in Nebraska," Mrs.
+Jones observed in cold, passionless tones.
+
+"Now, Sarah, why should I hurt a poor Indian girl's feelings?  Of
+course I didn't.
+
+"Well, she and Paloma talked Indian some more, and then Vahna says:
+'If you stay, I'll show you the biggest nugget that is the father
+of all other nuggets.'  'How big?' I asked.  'As big as me?'  She
+laughed.  'Bigger than you,' she says, 'much, much bigger.'  'They
+don't grow that way,' I said.  But she said she'd seen it and
+Paloma backed her up.  Why, to listen to them you'd have thought
+there was millions in that one nugget.  Paloma 'd never seen it
+herself, but she'd heard about it.  A secret of the tribe which she
+couldn't share, being only half Indian herself."
+
+Julian Jones paused and heaved a sigh.
+
+"And they kept on insisting until I fell for--"
+
+"The hussy," said Mrs. Jones, pert as a bird, at the ready instant.
+
+"'No; for the nugget.  What of Aunt Eliza's farm I was rich enough
+to quit railroading, but not rich enough to turn my back on big
+money--and I just couldn't help believing them two women.  Gee!  I
+could be another Vanderbilt, or J. P. Morgan.  That's the way I
+thought; and I started in to pump Vahna.  But she wouldn't give
+down.  'You come along with me,' she says.  'We can be back here in
+a couple of weeks with all the gold the both of us can carry.'
+'We'll take a burro, or a pack-train of burros,' was my suggestion.
+But nothing doing.  And Paloma agreed with her.  It was too
+dangerous.  The Indians would catch us.
+
+"The two of us pulled out when the nights were moonlight.  We
+travelled only at night, and laid up in the days.  Vahna wouldn't
+let me light a fire, and I missed my coffee something fierce.  We
+got up in the real high mountains of the main Andes, where the snow
+on one pass gave us some trouble; but the girl knew the trails,
+and, though we didn't waste any time, we were a full week getting
+there.  I know the general trend of our travel, because I carried a
+pocket compass; and the general trend is all I need to get there
+again, because of that peak.  There's no mistaking it.  There ain't
+another peak like it in the world.  Now, I'm not telling you its
+particular shape, but when you and I head out for it from Quito
+I'll take you straight to it.
+
+"It's no easy thing to climb, and the person doesn't live that can
+climb it at night.  We had to take the daylight to it, and didn't
+reach the top till after sunset.  Why, I could take hours and hours
+telling you about that last climb, which I won't.  The top was flat
+as a billiard table, about a quarter of an acre in size, and was
+almost clean of snow.  Vahna told me that the great winds that
+usually blew, kept the snow off of it.
+
+"We were winded, and I got mountain sickness so bad that I had to
+stretch out for a spell.  Then, when the moon come up, I took a
+prowl around.  It didn't take long, and I didn't catch a sight or a
+smell of anything that looked like gold.  And when I asked Vahna,
+she only laughed and clapped her hands.  Meantime my mountain
+sickness tuned up something fierce, and I sat down on a big rock to
+wait for it to ease down.
+
+"'Come on, now,' I said, when I felt better.  'Stop your fooling
+and tell me where that nugget is.'  'It's nearer to you right now
+than I'll ever get,' she answered, her big eyes going sudden
+wistful.  'All you Gringos are alike.  Gold is the love of your
+heart, and women don't count much.'
+
+"I didn't say anything.  That was no time to tell her about Sarah
+here.  But Vahna seemed to shake off her depressed feelings, and
+began to laugh and tease again.  'How do you like it?' she asked.
+'Like what?'  'The nugget you're sitting on.'
+
+"I jumped up as though it was a red-hot stove.  And all it was was
+a rock.  I felt nay heart sink.  Either she had gone clean loco or
+this was her idea of a joke.  Wrong on both counts.  She gave me
+the hatchet and told me to take a hack at the boulder, which I did,
+again and again, for yellow spots sprang up from under every blow.
+By the great Moses! it was gold!  The whole blamed boulder!"
+
+Jones rose suddenly to his full height and flung out his long arms,
+his face turned to the southern skies.  The movement shot panic
+into the heart of a swan that had drawn nearer with amiably
+predatory designs.  Its consequent abrupt retreat collided it with
+a stout old lady, who squealed and dropped her bag of peanuts.
+Jones sat down and resumed.
+
+"Gold, I tell you, solid gold and that pure and soft that I chopped
+chips out of it.  It had been coated with some sort of rain-proof
+paint or lacquer made out of asphalt or something.  No wonder I'd
+taken it for a rock.  It was ten feet long, all of five feet
+through, and tapering to both ends like an egg.  Here.  Take a look
+at this."
+
+From his pocket he drew and opened a leather case, from which he
+took an object wrapped in tissue-paper.  Unwrapping it, he dropped
+into my hand a chip of pure soft gold, the size of a ten-dollar
+gold-piece.  I could make out the greyish substance on one side
+with which it had been painted.
+
+"I chopped that from one end of the thing," Jones went on,
+replacing the chip in its paper and leather case.  "And lucky I put
+it in my pocket.  For right at my back came one loud word--more
+like a croak than a word, in my way of thinking.  And there was
+that lean old fellow with the eagle beak that had dropped in on us
+one night.  And there was about thirty Indians with him--all slim
+young fellows.
+
+"Vahna'd flopped down and begun whimpering, but I told her, 'Get up
+and make friends with them for me.'  'No, no,' she cried.  'This is
+death.  Good-bye, amigo--'"
+
+Here Mrs. Jones winced, and her husband abruptly checked the
+particular flow of his narrative.
+
+"'Then get up and fight along with me,' I said to her.  And she
+did.  She was some hellion, there on the top of the world, clawing
+and scratching tooth and nail--a regular she cat.  And I wasn't
+idle, though all I had was that hatchet and my long arms.  But they
+were too many for me, and there was no place for me to put my back
+against a wall.  When I come to, minutes after they'd cracked me on
+the head--here, feel this."
+
+Removing his hat, Julian Jones guided my finger tips through his
+thatch of sandy hair until they sank into an indentation.  It was
+fully three inches long, and went into the bone itself of the
+skull.
+
+"When I come to, there was Vahna spread-eagled on top of the
+nugget, and the old fellow with a beak jabbering away solemnly as
+if going through some sort of religious exercises.  In his hand he
+had a stone knife--you know, a thin, sharp sliver of some obsidian-
+like stuff same as they make arrow-heads out of.  I couldn't lift a
+hand, being held down, and being too weak besides.  And--well,
+anyway, that stone knife did for her, and me they didn't even do
+the honour of killing there on top their sacred peak.  They chucked
+me off of it like so much carrion.
+
+"And the buzzards didn't get me either.  I can see the moonlight
+yet, shining on all those peaks of snow, as I went down.  Why, sir,
+it was a five-hundred-foot fall, only I didn't make it.  I went
+into a big snow-drift in a crevice.  And when I come to (hours
+after I know, for it was full day when I next saw the sun), I found
+myself in a regular snow-cave or tunnel caused by the water from
+the melting snow running along the ledge.  In fact, the stone above
+actually overhung just beyond where I first landed.  A few feet
+more to the side, either way, and I'd almost be going yet.  It was
+a straight miracle, that's what it was.
+
+"But I paid for it.  It was two years and over before I knew what
+happened.  All I knew was that I was Julian Jones and that I'd been
+blacklisted in the big strike, and that I was married to Sarah
+here.  I mean that.  I didn't know anything in between, and when
+Sarah tried to talk about it, it gave me pains in the head.  I mean
+my head was queer, and I knew it was queer.
+
+"And then, sitting on the porch of her father's farmhouse back in
+Nebraska one moonlight evening, Sarah came out and put that gold
+chip into my hand.  Seems she'd just found it in the torn lining of
+the trunk I'd brought back from Ecuador--I who for two years didn't
+even know I'd been to Ecuador, or Australia, or anything!  Well, I
+just sat there looking at the chip in the moonlight, and turning it
+over and over and figuring what it was and where it'd come from,
+when all of a sudden there was a snap inside my head as if
+something had broken, and then I could see Vahna spread-eagled on
+that big nugget and the old fellow with the beak waving the stone
+knife, and . . . and everything.  That is, everything that had
+happened from the time I first left Nebraska to when I crawled to
+the daylight out of the snow after they had chucked me off the
+mountain-top.  But everything that'd happened after that I'd clean
+forgotten.  When Sarah said I was her husband, I wouldn't listen to
+her.  Took all her family and the preacher that'd married us to
+convince me.
+
+"Later on I wrote to Seth Manners.  The railroad hadn't killed him
+yet, and he pieced out a lot for me.  I'll show you his letters.
+I've got them at the hotel.  One day, he said, making his regular
+run, I crawled out on to the track.  I didn't stand upright, I just
+crawled.  He took me for a calf, or a big dog, at first.  I wasn't
+anything human, he said, and I didn't know him or anything.  As
+near as I can make out, it was ten days after the mountain-top to
+the time Seth picked me up.  What I ate I don't know.  Maybe I
+didn't eat.  Then it was doctors at Quito, and Paloma nursing me
+(she must have packed that gold chip in my trunk), until they found
+out I was a man without a mind, and the railroad sent me back to
+Nebraska.  At any rate, that's what Seth writes me.  Of myself, I
+don't know.  But Sarah here knows.  She corresponded with the
+railroad before they shipped me and all that."
+
+Mrs. Jones nodded affirmation of his words, sighed and evidenced
+unmistakable signs of eagerness to go.
+
+"I ain't been able to work since," her husband continued.  "And I
+ain't been able to figure out how to get back that big nugget.
+Sarah's got money of her own, and she won't let go a penny--"
+
+"He won't get down to THAT country no more!" she broke forth.
+
+"But, Sarah, Vahna's dead--you know that," Julian Jones protested.
+
+"I don't know anything about anything," she answered decisively,
+"except that THAT country is no place for a married man."
+
+Her lips snapped together, and she fixed an unseeing stare across
+to where the afternoon sun was beginning to glow into sunset.  I
+gazed for a moment at her face, white, plump, tiny, and implacable,
+and gave her up.
+
+"How do you account for such a mass of gold being there?" I queried
+of Julian Jones.  "A solid-gold meteor that fell out of the sky?"
+
+"Not for a moment."  He shook his head.  " It was carried there by
+the Indians."
+
+"Up a mountain like that--and such enormous weight and size!" I
+objected.
+
+"Just as easy," he smiled.  "I used to be stumped by that
+proposition myself, after I got my memory back.  Now how in Sam
+Hill--' I used to begin, and then spend hours figuring at it.  And
+then when I got the answer I felt downright idiotic, it was that
+easy."  He paused, then announced:  "They didn't."
+
+"But you just--said they did."
+
+"They did and they didn't," was his enigmatic reply.  "Of course
+they never carried that monster nugget up there.  What they did was
+to carry up its contents."
+
+He waited until he saw enlightenment dawn in my face.
+
+"And then of course melted all the gold, or welded it, or smelted
+it, all into one piece.  You know the first Spaniards down there,
+under a leader named Pizarro, were a gang of robbers and cut-
+throats.  They went through the country like the hoof-and-mouth
+disease, and killed the Indians off like cattle.  You see, the
+Indians had lots of gold.  Well, what the Spaniards didn't get, the
+surviving Indians hid away in that one big chunk on top the
+mountain, and it's been waiting there ever since for me--and for
+you, if you want to go in on it."
+
+And here, by the Lagoon of the Palace of Fine Arts, ended my
+acquaintance with Julian Jones.  On my agreeing to finance the
+adventure, he promised to call on me at my hotel next morning with
+the letters of Seth Manners and the railroad, and conclude
+arrangements.  But he did not call.  That evening I telephoned his
+hotel and was informed by the clerk that Mr. Julian Jones and wife
+had departed in the early afternoon, with their baggage.
+
+Can Mrs. Jones have rushed him back and hidden him away in
+Nebraska?  I remember that as we said good-bye, there was that in
+her smile that recalled the vulpine complacency of Mona Lisa, the
+Wise.
+
+Kohala, Hawaii,
+May 5, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+STORY:  LIKE ARGUS OF THE ANCIENT TIMES
+
+
+
+
+It was the summer of 1897, and there was trouble in the Tarwater
+family.  Grandfather Tarwater, after remaining properly subdued and
+crushed for a quiet decade, had broken out again.  This time it was
+the Klondike fever.  His first and one unvarying symptom of such
+attacks was song.  One chant only he raised, though he remembered
+no more than the first stanza and but three lines of that.  And the
+family knew his feet were itching and his brain was tingling with
+the old madness, when he lifted his hoarse-cracked voice, now
+falsetto-cracked, in:
+
+
+Like Argus of the ancient times,
+We leave this modern Greece,
+Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum,
+To shear the Golden Fleece.
+
+
+Ten years earlier he had lifted the chant, sung to the air of the
+"Doxology," when afflicted with the fever to go gold-mining in
+Patagonia.  The multitudinous family had sat upon him, but had had
+a hard time doing it.  When all else had failed to shake his
+resolution, they had applied lawyers to him, with the threat of
+getting out guardianship papers and of confining him in the state
+asylum for the insane--which was reasonable for a man who had, a
+quarter of a century before, speculated away all but ten meagre
+acres of a California principality, and who had displayed no better
+business acumen ever since.
+
+The application of lawyers to John Tarwater was like the
+application of a mustard plaster.  For, in his judgment, they were
+the gentry, more than any other, who had skinned him out of the
+broad Tarwater acres.  So, at the time of his Patagonian fever, the
+very thought of so drastic a remedy was sufficient to cure him.  He
+quickly demonstrated he was not crazy by shaking the fever from him
+and agreeing not to go to Patagonia.
+
+Next, he demonstrated how crazy he really was, by deeding over to
+his family, unsolicited, the ten acres on Tarwater Flat, the house,
+barn, outbuildings, and water-rights.  Also did he turn over the
+eight hundred dollars in bank that was the long-saved salvage of
+his wrecked fortune.  But for this the family found no cause for
+committal to the asylum, since such committal would necessarily
+invalidate what he had done.
+
+"Grandfather is sure peeved," said Mary, his oldest daughter,
+herself a grandmother, when her father quit smoking.
+
+All he had retained for himself was a span of old horses, a
+mountain buckboard, and his one room in the crowded house.
+Further, having affirmed that he would be beholden to none of them,
+he got the contract to carry the United States mail, twice a week,
+from Kelterville up over Tarwater Mountain to Old Almaden--which
+was a sporadically worked quick-silver mine in the upland cattle
+country.  With his old horses it took all his time to make the two
+weekly round trips.  And for ten years, rain or shine, he had never
+missed a trip.  Nor had he failed once to pay his week's board into
+Mary's hand.  This board he had insisted on, in the convalescence
+from his Patagonian fever, and he had paid it strictly, though he
+had given up tobacco in order to be able to do it.
+
+"Huh!" he confided to the ruined water wheel of the old Tarwater
+Mill, which he had built from the standing timber and which had
+ground wheat for the first settlers.  "Huh!  They'll never put me
+in the poor farm so long as I support myself.  And without a penny
+to my name it ain't likely any lawyer fellows'll come snoopin'
+around after me."
+
+And yet, precisely because of these highly rational acts, it was
+held that John Tarwater was mildly crazy!
+
+The first time he had lifted the chant of "Like Argus of the
+Ancient Times," had been in 1849, when, twenty-two years' of age,
+violently attacked by the Californian fever, he had sold two
+hundred and forty Michigan acres, forty of it cleared, for the
+price of four yoke of oxen, and a wagon, and had started across the
+Plains.
+
+"And we turned off at Fort Hall, where the Oregon emigration went
+north'ard, and swung south for Californy," was his way of
+concluding the narrative of that arduous journey.  "And Bill Ping
+and me used to rope grizzlies out of the underbrush of Cache Slough
+in the Sacramento Valley."
+
+Years of freighting and mining had followed, and, with a stake
+gleaned from the Merced placers, he satisfied the land-hunger of
+his race and time by settling in Sonoma County.
+
+During the ten years of carrying the mail across Tarwater Township,
+up Tarwater Valley, and over Tarwater Mountain, most all of which
+land had once been his, he had spent his time dreaming of winning
+back that land before he died.  And now, his huge gaunt form more
+erect than it had been for years, with a glinting of blue fires in
+his small and close-set eyes, he was lifting his ancient chant
+again.
+
+"There he goes now--listen to him," said William Tarwater.
+
+"Nobody at home," laughed Harris Topping, day labourer, husband of
+Annie Tarwater, and father of her nine children.
+
+The kitchen door opened to admit the old man, returning from
+feeding his horses.  The song had ceased from his lips; but Mary
+was irritable from a burnt hand and a grandchild whose stomach
+refused to digest properly diluted cows' milk.
+
+"Now there ain't no use you carryin' on that way, father," she
+tackled him.  "The time's past for you to cut and run for a place
+like the Klondike, and singing won't buy you nothing."
+
+"Just the same," he answered quietly.  "I bet I could go to that
+Klondike place and pick up enough gold to buy back the Tarwater
+lands."
+
+"Old fool!" Annie contributed.
+
+"You couldn't buy them back for less'n three hundred thousand and
+then some," was William's effort at squelching him.
+
+"Then I could pick up three hundred thousand, and then some, if I
+was only there," the old man retorted placidly.
+
+"Thank God you can't walk there, or you'd be startin', I know,"
+Mary cried.  "Ocean travel costs money."
+
+"I used to have money," her father said humbly.
+
+"Well, you ain't got any now--so forget it," William advised.
+"Them times is past, like roping bear with Bill Ping.  There ain't
+no more bear."
+
+"Just the same--"
+
+But Mary cut him off.  Seizing the day's paper from the kitchen
+table, she flourished it savagely under her aged progenitor's nose.
+
+"What do those Klondikers say?  There it is in cold print.  Only
+the young and robust can stand the Klondike.  It's worse than the
+north pole.  And they've left their dead a-plenty there themselves.
+Look at their pictures.  You're forty years older 'n the oldest of
+them."
+
+John Tarwater did look, but his eyes strayed to other photographs
+on the highly sensational front page.
+
+"And look at the photys of them nuggets they brought down," he
+said.  "I know gold.  Didn't I gopher twenty thousand outa the
+Merced?  And wouldn't it a-ben a hundred thousand if that
+cloudburst hadn't busted my wing-dam?  Now if I was only in the
+Klondike--"
+
+"Crazy as a loon," William sneered in open aside to the rest.
+
+"A nice way to talk to your father," Old Man Tarwater censured
+mildly.  "My father'd have walloped the tar out of me with a
+single-tree if I'd spoke to him that way."
+
+"But you ARE crazy, father--" William began.
+
+"Reckon you're right, son.  And that's where my father wasn't
+crazy.  He'd a-done it."
+
+"The old man's been reading some of them magazine articles about
+men who succeeded after forty," Annie jibed.
+
+"And why not, daughter?" he asked.  "And why can't a man succeed
+after he's seventy?  I was only seventy this year.  And mebbe I
+could succeed if only I could get to the Klondike--"
+
+"Which you ain't going to get to," Mary shut him off.
+
+"Oh, well, then," he sighed, "seein's I ain't, I might just as well
+go to bed."
+
+He stood up, tall, gaunt, great-boned and gnarled, a splendid ruin
+of a man.  His ragged hair and whiskers were not grey but snowy
+white, as were the tufts of hair that stood out on the backs of his
+huge bony fingers.  He moved toward the door, opened it, sighed,
+and paused with a backward look.
+
+"Just the same," he murmured plaintively, "the bottoms of my feet
+is itching something terrible."
+
+Long before the family stirred next morning, his horses fed and
+harnessed by lantern light, breakfast cooked and eaten by lamp
+fight, Old Man Tarwater was off and away down Tarwater Valley on
+the road to Kelterville.  Two things were unusual about this usual
+trip which he had made a thousand and forty times since taking the
+mail contract.  He did not drive to Kelterville, but turned off on
+the main road south to Santa Rosa.  Even more remarkable than this
+was the paper-wrapped parcel between his feet.  It contained his
+one decent black suit, which Mary had been long reluctant to see
+him wear any more, not because it was shabby, but because, as he
+guessed what was at the back of her mind, it was decent enough to
+bury him in.
+
+And at Santa Rosa, in a second-hand clothes shop, he sold the suit
+outright for two dollars and a half.  From the same obliging
+shopman he received four dollars for the wedding ring of his long-
+dead wife.  The span of horses and the wagon he disposed of for
+seventy-five dollars, although twenty-five was all he received down
+in cash.  Chancing to meet Alton Granger on the street, to whom
+never before had he mentioned the ten dollars loaned him in '74, he
+reminded Alton Granger of the little affair, and was promptly paid.
+Also, of all unbelievable men to be in funds, he so found the town
+drunkard for whom he had bought many a drink in the old and palmy
+days.  And from him John Tarwater borrowed a dollar.  Finally, he
+took the afternoon train to San Francisco.
+
+A dozen days later, carrying a half-empty canvas sack of blankets
+and old clothes, he landed on the beach of Dyea in the thick of the
+great Klondike Rush.  The beach was screaming bedlam.  Ten thousand
+tons of outfit lay heaped and scattered, and twice ten thousand men
+struggled with it and clamoured about it.  Freight, by Indian-back,
+over Chilcoot to Lake Linderman, had jumped from sixteen to thirty
+cents a pound, which latter was a rate of six hundred dollars a
+ton.  And the sub-arctic winter gloomed near at hand.  All knew it,
+and all knew that of the twenty thousand of them very few would get
+across the passes, leaving the rest to winter and wait for the late
+spring thaw.
+
+Such the beach old John Tarwater stepped upon; and straight across
+the beach and up the trail toward Chilcoot he headed, cackling his
+ancient chant, a very Grandfather Argus himself, with no outfit
+worry in the world, for he did not possess any outfit.  That night
+he slept on the flats, five miles above Dyea, at the head of canoe
+navigation.  Here the Dyea River became a rushing mountain torrent,
+plunging out of a dark canyon from the glaciers that fed it far
+above.
+
+And here, early next morning, he beheld a little man weighing no
+more than a hundred, staggering along a foot-log under all of a
+hundred pounds of flour strapped on his back.  Also, he beheld the
+little man stumble off the log and fall face-downward in a quiet
+eddy where the water was two feet deep and proceed quietly to
+drown.  It was no desire of his to take death so easily, but the
+flour on his back weighed as much as he and would not let him up.
+
+"Thank you, old man," he said to Tarwater, when the latter had
+dragged him up into the air and ashore.
+
+While he unlaced his shoes and ran the water out, they had further
+talk.  Next, he fished out a ten-dollar gold-piece and offered it
+to his rescuer.
+
+Old Tarwater shook his head and shivered, for the ice-water had wet
+him to his knees.
+
+"But I reckon I wouldn't object to settin' down to a friendly meal
+with you."
+
+"Ain't had breakfast?" the little man, who was past forty and who
+had said his name was Anson, queried with a glance frankly curious.
+
+"Nary bite," John Tarwater answered.
+
+"Where's your outfit?  Ahead?"
+
+"Nary outfit."
+
+"Expect to buy your grub on the Inside?"
+
+"Nary a dollar to buy it with, friend.  Which ain't so important as
+a warm bite of breakfast right now."
+
+In Anson's camp, a quarter of a mile on, Tarwater found a slender,
+red-whiskered young man of thirty cursing over a fire of wet willow
+wood.  Introduced as Charles, he transferred his scowl and wrath to
+Tarwater, who, genially oblivious, devoted himself to the fire,
+took advantage of the chill morning breeze to create a draught
+which the other had left stupidly blocked by stones, and soon
+developed less smoke and more flame.  The third member of the
+party, Bill Wilson, or Big Bill as they called him, came in with a
+hundred-and-forty-pound pack; and what Tarwater esteemed to be a
+very rotten breakfast was dished out by Charles.  The mush was half
+cooked and mostly burnt, the bacon was charred carbon, and the
+coffee was unspeakable.
+
+Immediately the meal was wolfed down the three partners took their
+empty pack-straps and headed down trail to where the remainder of
+their outfit lay at the last camp a mile away.  And old Tarwater
+became busy.  He washed the dishes, foraged dry wood, mended a
+broken pack-strap, put an edge on the butcher-knife and camp-axe,
+and repacked the picks and shovels into a more carryable parcel.
+
+What had impressed him during the brief breakfast was the sort of
+awe in which Anson and Big Bill stood of Charles.  Once, during the
+morning, while Anson took a breathing spell after bringing in
+another hundred-pound pack, Tarwater delicately hinted his
+impression.
+
+"You see, it's this way," Anson said.  "We've divided our
+leadership.  We've got specialities.  Now I'm a carpenter.  When we
+get to Lake Linderman, and the trees are chopped and whipsawed into
+planks, I'll boss the building of the boat.  Big Bill is a logger
+and miner.  So he'll boss getting out the logs and all mining
+operations.  Most of our outfit's ahead.  We went broke paying the
+Indians to pack that much of it to the top of Chilcoot.  Our last
+partner is up there with it, moving it along by himself down the
+other side.  His name's Liverpool, and he's a sailor.  So, when the
+boat's built, he's the boss of the outfit to navigate the lakes and
+rapids to Klondike.
+
+"And Charles--this Mr. Crayton--what might his speciality be?"
+Tarwater asked.
+
+"He's the business man.  When it comes to business and organization
+he's boss."
+
+"Hum," Tarwater pondered.  "Very lucky to get such a bunch of
+specialities into one outfit."
+
+"More than luck," Anson agreed.  "It was all accident, too.  Each
+of us started alone.  We met on the steamer coming up from San
+Francisco, and formed the party.--Well, I got to be goin'.  Charles
+is liable to get kicking because I ain't packin' my share' just the
+same, you can't expect a hundred-pound man to pack as much as a
+hundred-and-sixty-pounder."
+
+"Stick around and cook us something for dinner," Charles, on his
+next load in and noting the effects of the old man's handiness,
+told Tarwater.
+
+And Tarwater cooked a dinner that was a dinner, washed the dishes,
+had real pork and beans for supper, and bread baked in a frying-pan
+that was so delectable than the three partners nearly foundered
+themselves on it.  Supper dishes washed, he cut shavings and
+kindling for a quick and certain breakfast fire, showed Anson a
+trick with foot-gear that was invaluable to any hiker, sang his
+"Like Argus of the Ancient Times," and told them of the great
+emigration across the Plains in Forty-nine.
+
+"My goodness, the first cheerful and hearty-like camp since we hit
+the beach," Big Bill remarked as he knocked out his pipe and began
+pulling off his shoes for bed.
+
+"Kind of made things easy, boys, eh?"  Tarwater queried genially.
+
+All nodded.  "Well, then, I got a proposition, boys.  You can take
+it or leave it, but just listen kindly to it.  You're in a hurry to
+get in before the freeze-up.  Half the time is wasted over the
+cooking by one of you that he might be puttin' in packin' outfit.
+If I do the cookin' for you, you all'll get on that much faster.
+Also, the cookin' 'll be better, and that'll make you pack better.
+And I can pack quite a bit myself in between times, quite a bit,
+yes, sir, quite a bit."
+
+Big Bill and Anson were just beginning to nod their heads in
+agreement, when Charles stopped them.
+
+"What do you expect of us in return?" he demanded of the old man.
+
+"Oh, I leave it up to the boys."
+
+"That ain't business," Charles reprimanded sharply.  "You made the
+proposition.  Now finish it."
+
+"Well, it's this way--"
+
+"You expect us to feed you all winter, eh?" Charles interrupted.
+
+"No, siree, I don't.  All I reckon is a passage to Klondike in your
+boat would be mighty square of you."
+
+"You haven't an ounce of grub, old man.  You'll starve to death
+when you get there."
+
+"I've been feedin' some long time pretty successful," Old Tarwater
+replied, a whimsical light in his eyes.  "I'm seventy, and ain't
+starved to death never yet."
+
+"Will you sign a paper to the effect that you shift for yourself as
+soon as you get to Dawson?" the business one demanded.
+
+"Oh, sure," was the response.
+
+Again Charles checked his two partners' expressions of satisfaction
+with the arrangement.
+
+"One other thing, old man.  We're a party of four, and we all have
+a vote on questions like this.  Young Liverpool is ahead with the
+main outfit.  He's got a say so, and he isn't here to say it."
+
+"What kind of a party might he be?" Tarwater inquired.
+
+"He's a rough-neck sailor, and he's got a quick, bad temper."
+
+"Some turbulent," Anson contributed.
+
+"And the way he can cuss is simply God-awful," Big Bill testified.
+
+"But he's square," Big Bill added.
+
+Anson nodded heartily to this appraisal.
+
+"Well, boys," Tarwater summed up, "I set out for Californy and I
+got there.  And I'm going to get to Klondike.  Ain't a thing can
+stop me, ain't a thing.  I'm going to get three hundred thousand
+outa the ground, too.  Ain't a thing can stop me, ain't a thing,
+because I just naturally need the money.  I don't mind a bad temper
+so long's the boy is square.  I'll take my chance, an' I'll work
+along with you till we catch up with him.  Then, if he says no to
+the proposition, I reckon I'll lose.  But somehow I just can't see
+'m sayin' no, because that'd mean too close up to freeze-up and too
+late for me to find another chance like this.  And, as I'm sure
+going to get to Klondike, it's just plumb impossible for him to say
+no."
+
+Old John Tarwater became a striking figure on a trail unusually
+replete with striking figures.  With thousands of men, each back-
+tripping half a ton of outfit, retracing every mile of the trail
+twenty times, all came to know him and to hail him as "Father
+Christmas."  And, as he worked, ever he raised his chant with his
+age-falsetto voice.  None of the three men he had joined could
+complain about his work.  True, his joints were stiff--he admitted
+to a trifle of rheumatism.  He moved slowly, and seemed to creak
+and crackle when he moved; but he kept on moving.  Last into the
+blankets at night, he was first out in the morning, so that the
+other three had hot coffee before their one before-breakfast pack.
+And, between breakfast and dinner and between dinner and supper, he
+always managed to back-trip for several packs himself.  Sixty
+pounds was the limit of his burden, however.  He could manage
+seventy-five, but he could not keep it up.  Once, he tried ninety,
+but collapsed on the trail and was seriously shaky for a couple of
+days afterward.
+
+Work!  On a trail where hard-working men learned for the first time
+what work was, no man worked harder in proportion to his strength
+than Old Tarwater.  Driven desperately on by the near-thrust of
+winter, and lured madly on by the dream of gold, they worked to
+their last ounce of strength and fell by the way.  Others, when
+failure made certain, blew out their brains.  Some went mad, and
+still others, under the irk of the man-destroying strain, broke
+partnerships and dissolved life-time friendships with fellows just
+as good as themselves and just as strained and mad.
+
+Work!  Old Tarwater could shame them all, despite his creaking and
+crackling and the nasty hacking cough he had developed.  Early and
+late, on trail or in camp beside the trail he was ever in evidence,
+ever busy at something, ever responsive to the hail of "Father
+Christmas."  Weary back-trippers would rest their packs on a log or
+rock alongside of where he rested his, and would say:  "Sing us
+that song of yourn, dad, about Forty-Nine."  And, when he had
+wheezingly complied, they would arise under their loads, remark
+that it was real heartening, and hit the forward trail again.
+
+"If ever a man worked his passage and earned it," Big Bill confided
+to his two partners, "that man's our old Skeezicks."
+
+"You bet," Anson confirmed.  "He's a valuable addition to the
+party, and I, for one, ain't at all disagreeable to the notion of
+making him a regular partner--"
+
+"None of that!" Charles Crayton cut in.  "When we get to Dawson
+we're quit of him--that's the agreement.  We'd only have to bury
+him if we let him stay on with us.  Besides, there's going to be a
+famine, and every ounce of grub'll count.  Remember, we're feeding
+him out of our own supply all the way in.  And if we run short in
+the pinch next year, you'll know the reason.  Steamboats can't get
+up grub to Dawson till the middle of June, and that's nine months
+away."
+
+"Well, you put as much money and outfit in as the rest of us," Big
+Bill conceded, "and you've a say according."
+
+"And I'm going to have my say," Charles asserted with increasing
+irritability.  "And it's lucky for you with your fool sentiments
+that you've got somebody to think ahead for you, else you'd all
+starve to death.  I tell you that famine's coming.  I've been
+studying the situation.  Flour will be two dollars a pound, or ten,
+and no sellers.  You mark my words."
+
+Across the rubble-covered flats, up the dark canyon to Sheep Camp,
+past the over-hanging and ever-threatening glaciers to the Scales,
+and from the Scales up the steep pitches of ice-scoured rock where
+packers climbed with hands and feet, Old Tarwater camp-cooked and
+packed and sang.  He blew across Chilcoot Pass, above timberline,
+in the first swirl of autumn snow.  Those below, without firewood,
+on the bitter rim of Crater Lake, heard from the driving obscurity
+above them a weird voice chanting:
+
+
+"Like Argus of the ancient times,
+We leave this modern Greece,
+Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum,
+To shear the Golden Fleece."
+
+
+And out of the snow flurries they saw appear a tall, gaunt form,
+with whiskers of flying white that blended with the storm, bending
+under a sixty-pound pack of camp dunnage.
+
+"Father Christmas!" was the hail.  And then:  "Three rousing cheers
+for Father Christmas!"
+
+Two miles beyond Crater Lake lay Happy Camp--so named because here
+was found the uppermost fringe of the timber line, where men might
+warm themselves by fire again.  Scarcely could it be called timber,
+for it was a dwarf rock-spruce that never raised its loftiest
+branches higher than a foot above the moss, and that twisted and
+grovelled like a pig-vegetable under the moss.  Here, on the trail
+leading into Happy Camp, in the first sunshine of half a dozen
+days, Old Tarwater rested his pack against a huge boulder and
+caught his breath.  Around this boulder the trail passed, laden men
+toiling slowly forward and men with empty pack-straps limping
+rapidly back for fresh loads.  Twice Old Tarwater essayed to rise
+and go on, and each time, warned by his shakiness, sank back to
+recover more strength.  From around the boulder he heard voices in
+greeting, recognized Charles Crayton's voice, and realized that at
+last they had met up with Young Liverpool.  Quickly, Charles
+plunged into business, and Tarwater heard with great distinctness
+every word of Charles' unflattering description of him and the
+proposition to give him passage to Dawson.
+
+"A dam fool proposition," was Liverpool's judgment, when Charles
+had concluded.  "An old granddad of seventy!  If he's on his last
+legs, why in hell did you hook up with him?  If there's going to be
+a famine, and it looks like it, we need every ounce of grub for
+ourselves.  We only out-fitted for four, not five."
+
+"It's all right," Tarwater heard Charles assuring the other.
+"Don't get excited.  The old codger agreed to leave the final
+decision to you when we caught up with you.  All you've got to do
+is put your foot down and say no."
+
+"You mean it's up to me to turn the old one down, after your
+encouraging him and taking advantage of his work clear from Dyea
+here?"
+
+"It's a hard trail, Liverpool, and only the men that are hard will
+get through," Charles strove to palliate.
+
+"And I'm to do the dirty work?" Liverpool complained, while
+Tarwater's heart sank.
+
+"That's just about the size of it," Charles said.  "You've got the
+deciding."
+
+Then old Tarwater's heart uprose again as the air was rent by a
+cyclone of profanity, from the midst of which crackled sentences
+like: --"Dirty skunks! . . . See you in hell first! . . . My mind's
+made up! . . . Hell's fire and corruption! . . . The old codger
+goes down the Yukon with us, stack on that, my hearty! . . . Hard?
+You don't know what hard is unless I show you! . . . I'll bust the
+whole outfit to hell and gone if any of you try to side-track him!
+. . . Just try to side-track him, that is all, and you'll think the
+Day of Judgment and all God's blastingness has hit the camp in one
+chunk!"
+
+Such was the invigoratingness of Liverpool's flow of speech that,
+quite without consciousness of effort, the old man arose easily
+under his load and strode on toward Happy Camp.
+
+From Happy Camp to Long Lake, from Long Lake to Deep Lake, and from
+Deep Lake up over the enormous hog-back and down to Linderman, the
+man-killing race against winter kept on.  Men broke their hearts
+and backs and wept beside the trail in sheer exhaustion.  But
+winter never faltered.  The fall gales blew, and amid bitter
+soaking rains and ever-increasing snow flurries, Tarwater and the
+party to which he was attached piled the last of their outfit on
+the beach.
+
+There was no rest.  Across the lake, a mile above a roaring
+torrent, they located a patch of spruce and built their saw-pit.
+Here, by hand, with an inadequate whipsaw, they sawed the spruce-
+trunks into lumber.  They worked night and day.  Thrice, on the
+night-shift, underneath in the saw-pit, Old Tarwater fainted.  By
+day he cooked as well, and, in the betweenwhiles, helped Anson in
+the building of the boat beside the torrent as the green planks
+came down.
+
+The days grew shorter.  The wind shifted into the north and blew
+unending gales.  In the mornings the weary men crawled from their
+blankets and in their socks thawed out their frozen shoes by the
+fire Tarwater always had burning for them.  Ever arose the
+increasing tale of famine on the Inside.  The last grub steamboats
+up from Bering Sea were stalled by low water at the beginning of
+the Yukon Flats hundreds of miles north of Dawson.  In fact, they
+lay at the old Hudson Bay Company's post at Fort Yukon inside the
+Arctic Circle.  Flour in Dawson was up to two dollars a pound, but
+no one would sell.  Bonanza and Eldorado Kings, with money to burn,
+were leaving for the Outside because they could buy no grub.
+Miners' Committees were confiscating all grub and putting the
+population on strict rations.  A man who held out an ounce of grub
+was shot like a dog.  A score had been so executed already.
+
+And, under a strain which had broken so many younger men, Old
+Tarwater began to break.  His cough had become terrible, and had
+not his exhausted comrades slept like the dead, he would have kept
+them awake nights.  Also, he began to take chills, so that he
+dressed up to go to bed.  When he had finished so dressing, not a
+rag of garment remained in his clothes bag.  All he possessed was
+on his back and swathed around his gaunt old form.
+
+"Gee!" said Big Bill.  "If he puts all he's got on now, when it
+ain't lower than twenty above, what'll he do later on when it goes
+down to fifty and sixty below?"
+
+They lined the rough-made boat down the mountain torrent, nearly
+losing it a dozen times, and rowed across the south end of Lake
+Linderman in the thick of a fall blizzard.  Next morning they
+planned to load and start, squarely into the teeth of the north, on
+their perilous traverse of half a thousand miles of lakes and
+rapids and box canyons.  But before he went to bed that night,
+Young Liverpool was out over the camp.  He returned to find his
+whole party asleep.  Rousing Tarwater, he talked with him in low
+tones.
+
+"Listen, dad," he said.--"You've got a passage in our boat, and if
+ever a man earned a passage you have.  But you know yourself you're
+pretty well along in years, and your health right now ain't
+exciting.  If you go on with us you'll croak surer'n hell.--Now
+wait till I finish, dad.  The price for a passage has jumped to
+five hundred dollars.  I've been throwing my feet and I've hustled
+a passenger.  He's an official of the Alaska Commercial and just
+has to get in.  He's bid up to six hundred to go with me in our
+boat.  Now the passage is yours.  You sell it to him, poke the six
+hundred into your jeans, and pull South for California while the
+goin's good.  You can be in Dyea in two days, and in California in
+a week more.  What d'ye say?"
+
+Tarwater coughed and shivered for a space, ere he could get freedom
+of breath for speech.
+
+"Son," he said, "I just want to tell you one thing.  I drove my
+four yoke of oxen across the Plains in Forty-nine and lost nary a
+one.  I drove them plumb to Californy, and I freighted with them
+afterward out of Sutter's Fort to American Bar.  Now I'm going to
+Klondike.  Ain't nothing can stop me, ain't nothing at all.  I'm
+going to ride that boat, with you at the steering sweep, clean to
+Klondike, and I'm going to shake three hundred thousand out of the
+moss-roots.  That being so, it's contrary to reason and common
+sense for me to sell out my passage.  But I thank you kindly, son,
+I thank you kindly."
+
+The young sailor shot out his hand impulsively and gripped the old
+man's.
+
+"By God, dad!" he cried.  "You're sure going to go then.  You're
+the real stuff."  He looked with undisguised contempt across the
+sleepers to where Charles Crayton snored in his red beard.  "They
+don't seem to make your kind any more, dad."
+
+Into the north they fought their way, although old-timers, coming
+out, shook their heads and prophesied they would be frozen in on
+the lakes.  That the freeze-up might come any day was patent, and
+delays of safety were no longer considered.  For this reason,
+Liverpool decided to shoot the rapid stream connecting Linderman to
+Lake Bennett with the fully loaded boat.  It was the custom to line
+the empty boats down and to portage the cargoes across.  Even then
+many empty boats had been wrecked.  But the time was past for such
+precaution.
+
+"Climb out, dad," Liverpool commanded as he prepared to swing from
+the bank and enter the rapids.
+
+Old Tarwater shook his white head.
+
+"I'm sticking to the outfit," he declared.  "It's the only way to
+get through.  You see, son, I'm going to Klondike.  If I stick by
+the boat, then the boat just naturally goes to Klondike, too.  If I
+get out, then most likely you'll lose the boat."
+
+"Well, there's no use in overloading," Charles announced, springing
+abruptly out on the bank as the boat cast off.
+
+"Next time you wait for my orders!" Liverpool shouted ashore as the
+current gripped the boat.  "And there won't be any more walking
+around rapids and losing time waiting to pick you up!"
+
+What took them ten minutes by river, took Charles half an hour by
+land, and while they waited for him at the head of Lake Bennett
+they passed the time of day with several dilapidated old-timers on
+their way out.  The famine news was graver than ever.  The North-
+west Mounted Police, stationed at the foot of Lake Marsh where the
+gold-rushers entered Canadian territory, were refusing to let a man
+past who did not carry with him seven hundred pounds of grub.  In
+Dawson City a thousand men, with dog-teams, were waiting the
+freeze-up to come out over the ice.  The trading companies could
+not fill their grub-contracts, and partners were cutting the cards
+to see which should go and which should stay and work the claims.
+
+"That settles it," Charles announced, when he learned of the action
+of the mounted police on the boundary.  "Old Man, you might as well
+start back now."
+
+"Climb aboard!"  Liverpool commanded.  "We're going to Klondike,
+and old dad is going along."
+
+A shift of gale to the south gave them a fair wind down Lake
+Bennett, before which they ran under a huge sail made by Liverpool.
+The heavy weight of outfit gave such ballast that he cracked on as
+a daring sailor should when moments counted.  A shift of four
+points into the south-west, coming just at the right time as they
+entered upon Caribou Crossing, drove them down that connecting link
+to lakes Tagish and Marsh.  In stormy sunset and twilight--they
+made the dangerous crossing of Great Windy Arm, wherein they beheld
+two other boat-loads of gold-rushers capsize and drown.
+
+Charles was for beaching for the night, but Liverpool held on,
+steering down Tagish by the sound of the surf on the shoals and by
+the occasional shore-fires that advertised wrecked or timid
+argonauts.  At four in the morning, he aroused Charles.  Old
+Tarwater, shiveringly awake, heard Liverpool order Crayton aft
+beside him at the steering-sweep, and also heard the one-sided
+conversation.
+
+"Just listen, friend Charles, and keep your own mouth shut,"
+Liverpool began.  "I want you to get one thing into your head and
+keep it there:  OLD DAD'S GOING BY THE POLICE.  UNDERSTAND? HE'S
+GOING BY.  When they examine our outfit, old dad's got a fifth
+share in it, savvee?  That'll put us all 'way under what we ought
+to have, but we can bluff it through.  Now get this, and get it
+hard:  THERE AIN'T GOING TO BE ANY FALL-DOWN ON THIS BLUFF--"
+
+"If you think I'd give away on the old codger--" Charles began
+indignantly.
+
+"You thought that," Liverpool checked him, "because I never
+mentioned any such thing.  Now--get me and get me hard:  I don't
+care what you've been thinking.  It's what you're going to think.
+We'll make the police post some time this afternoon, and we've got
+to get ready to pull the bluff without a hitch, and a word to the
+wise is plenty."
+
+"If you think I've got it in my mind--" Charles began again.
+
+"Look here," Liverpool shut him off.  "I don't know what's in your
+mind.  I don't want to know.  I want you to know what's in my mind.
+If there's any slip-up, if old dad gets turned back by the police,
+I'm going to pick out the first quiet bit of landscape and take you
+ashore on it.  And then I'm going to beat you up to the Queen's
+taste.  Get me, and get me hard.  It ain't going to be any half-way
+beating, but a real, two-legged, two-fisted, he-man beating.  I
+don't expect I'll kill you, but I'll come damn near to half-killing
+you."
+
+"But what can I do?" Charles almost whimpered.
+
+"Just one thing," was Liverpool's final word.  "You just pray.  You
+pray so hard that old dad gets by the police that he does get by.
+That's all.  Go back to your blankets."
+
+Before they gained Lake Le Barge, the land was sheeted with snow
+that would not melt for half a year.  Nor could they lay their boat
+at will against the bank, for the rim-ice was already forming.
+Inside the mouth of the river, just ere it entered Lake Le Barge,
+they found a hundred storm-bound boats of the argonauts.  Out of
+the north, across the full sweep of the great lake, blew an
+unending snow gale.  Three mornings they put out and fought it and
+the cresting seas it drove that turned to ice as they fell in-
+board.  While the others broke their hearts at the oars, Old
+Tarwater managed to keep up just sufficient circulation to survive
+by chopping ice and throwing it overboard.
+
+Each day for three days, beaten to helplessness, they turned tail
+on the battle and ran back into the sheltering river.  By the
+fourth day, the hundred boats had increased to three hundred, and
+the two thousand argonauts on board knew that the great gale
+heralded the freeze-up of Le Barge.  Beyond, the rapid rivers would
+continue to run for days, but unless they got beyond, and
+immediately, they were doomed to be frozen in for six months to
+come.
+
+"This day we go through," Liverpool announced.  "We turn back for
+nothing.  And those of us that dies at the oars will live again and
+go on pulling."
+
+And they went through, winning half the length of the lake by
+nightfall and pulling on through all the night hours as the wind
+went down, falling asleep at the oars and being rapped awake by
+Liverpool, toiling on through an age-long nightmare while the stars
+came out and the surface of the lake turned to the unruffledness of
+a sheet of paper and froze skin-ice that tinkled like broken glass
+as their oar-blades shattered it.
+
+As day broke clear and cold, they entered the river, with behind
+them a sea of ice.  Liverpool examined his aged passenger and found
+him helpless and almost gone.  When he rounded the boat to against
+the rim-ice to build a fire and warm up Tarwater inside and out,
+Charles protested against such loss of time.
+
+"This ain't business, so don't you come horning in," Liverpool
+informed him.  "I'm running the boat trip.  So you just climb out
+and chop firewood, and plenty of it.  I'll take care of dad.  You,
+Anson, make a fire on the bank.  And you, Bill, set up the Yukon
+stove in the boat.  Old dad ain't as young as the rest of us, and
+for the rest of this voyage he's going to have a fire on board to
+sit by."
+
+All of which came to pass; and the boat, in the grip of the
+current, like a river steamer with smoke rising from the two joints
+of stove-pipe, grounded on shoals, hung up on split currents, and
+charged rapids and canyons, as it drove deeper into the Northland
+winter.  The Big and Little Salmon rivers were throwing mush-ice
+into the main river as they passed, and, below the riffles, anchor-
+ice arose from the river bottom and coated the surface with crystal
+scum.  Night and day the rim-ice grew, till, in quiet places, it
+extended out a hundred yards from shore.  And Old Tarwater, with
+all his clothes on, sat by the stove and kept the fire going.
+Night and day, not daring to stop for fear of the imminent freeze-
+up, they dared to run, an increasing mushiness of ice running with
+them.
+
+"What ho, old hearty?" Liverpool would call out at times.
+
+"Cheer O," Old Tarwater had learned to respond.
+
+"What can I ever do for you, son, in payment?" Tarwater, stoking
+the fire, would sometimes ask Liverpool, beating now one released
+hand and now the other as he fought for circulation where he
+steered in the freezing stern-sheets.
+
+"Just break out that regular song of yours, old Forty-Niner," was
+the invariable reply.
+
+And Tarwater would lift his voice in the cackling chant, as he
+lifted it at the end, when the boat swung in through driving cake-
+ice and moored to the Dawson City bank, and all waterfront Dawson
+pricked its ears to hear the triumphant paean:
+
+
+Like Argus of the ancient times,
+We leave this modern Greece,
+Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum,
+To shear the Golden Fleece,
+
+
+Charles did it, but he did it so discreetly that none of his party,
+least of all the sailor, ever learned of it.  He saw two great open
+barges being filled up with men, and, on inquiry, learned that
+these were grubless ones being rounded up and sent down the Yukon
+by the Committee of Safety.  The barges were to be towed by the
+last little steamboat in Dawson, and the hope was that Fort Yukon,
+where lay the stranded steamboats, would be gained before the river
+froze.  At any rate, no matter what happened to them, Dawson would
+be relieved of their grub-consuming presence.  So to the Committee
+of Safety Charles went, privily to drop a flea in its ear
+concerning Tarwater's grubless, moneyless, and aged condition.
+Tarwater was one of the last gathered in, and when Young Liverpool
+returned to the boat, from the bank he saw the barges in a run of
+cake-ice, disappearing around the bend below Moose-hide Mountain.
+
+Running in cake-ice all the way, and several times escaping jams in
+the Yukon Flats, the barges made their hundreds of miles of
+progress farther into the north and froze up cheek by jowl with the
+grub-fleet.  Here, inside the Arctic Circle, Old Tarwater settled
+down to pass the long winter.  Several hours' work a day, chopping
+firewood for the steamboat companies, sufficed to keep him in food.
+For the rest of the time there was nothing to do but hibernate in
+his log cabin.
+
+Warmth, rest, and plenty to eat, cured his hacking cough and put
+him in as good physical condition as was possible for his advanced
+years.  But, even before Christmas, the lack of fresh vegetables
+caused scurvy to break out, and disappointed adventurer after
+disappointed adventurer took to his bunk in abject surrender to
+this culminating misfortune.  Not so Tarwater.  Even before the
+first symptoms appeared on him, he was putting into practice his
+one prescription, namely, exercise.  From the junk of the old
+trading post he resurrected a number of rusty traps, and from one
+of the steamboat captains he borrowed a rifle.
+
+Thus equipped, he ceased from wood-chopping, and began to make more
+than a mere living.  Nor was he downhearted when the scurvy broke
+out on his own body.  Ever he ran his trap-lines and sang his
+ancient chant.  Nor could the pessimist shake his surety of the
+three hundred thousand of Alaskan gold he as going to shake out of
+the moss-roots.
+
+"But this ain't gold-country," they told him.
+
+"Gold is where you find it, son, as I should know who was mining
+before you was born, 'way back in Forty-Nine," was his reply.
+"What was Bonanza Creek but a moose-pasture?  No miner'd look at
+it; yet they washed five-hundred-dollar pans and took out fifty
+million dollars.  Eldorado was just as bad.  For all you know,
+right under this here cabin, or right over the next hill, is
+millions just waiting for a lucky one like me to come and shake it
+out."
+
+At the end of January came his disaster.  Some powerful animal that
+he decided was a bob-cat, managing to get caught in one of his
+smaller traps, dragged it away.  A heavy snow-fall put a stop
+midway to his pursuit, losing the trail for him and losing himself.
+There were but several hours of daylight each day between the
+twenty hours of intervening darkness, and his efforts in the grey
+light and continually falling snow succeeded only in losing him
+more thoroughly.  Fortunately, when winter snow falls in the
+Northland the thermometer invariably rises; so, instead of the
+customary forty and fifty and even sixty degrees below zero, the
+temperature remained fifteen below.  Also, he was warmly clad and
+had a full matchbox.  Further to mitigate his predicament, on the
+fifth day he killed a wounded moose that weighed over half a ton.
+Making his camp beside it on a spruce-bottom, he was prepared to
+last out the winter, unless a searching party found him or his
+scurvy grew worse.
+
+But at the end of two weeks there had been no sign of search, while
+his scurvy had undeniably grown worse.  Against his fire, banked
+from outer cold by a shelter-wall of spruce-boughs, he crouched
+long hours in sleep and long hours in waking.  But the waking hours
+grew less, becoming semi-waking or half-dreaming hours as the
+process of hibernation worked their way with him.  Slowly the
+sparkle point of consciousness and identity that was John Tarwater
+sank, deeper and deeper, into the profounds of his being that had
+been compounded ere man was man, and while he was becoming man,
+when he, first of all animals, regarded himself with an
+introspective eye and laid the beginnings of morality in
+foundations of nightmare peopled by the monsters of his own ethic-
+thwarted desires.
+
+Like a man in fever, waking to intervals of consciousness, so Old
+Tarwater awoke, cooked his moose-meat, and fed the fire; but more
+and more time he spent in his torpor, unaware of what was day-dream
+and what was sleep-dream in the content of his unconsciousness.
+And here, in the unforgetable crypts of man's unwritten history,
+unthinkable and unrealizable, like passages of nightmare or
+impossible adventures of lunacy, he encountered the monsters
+created of man's first morality that ever since have vexed him into
+the spinning of fantasies to elude them or do battle with them.
+
+In short, weighted by his seventy years, in the vast and silent
+loneliness of the North, Old Tarwater, as in the delirium of drug
+or anaesthetic, recovered within himself, the infantile mind of the
+child-man of the early world.  It was in the dusk of Death's
+fluttery wings that Tarwater thus crouched, and, like his remote
+forebear, the child-man, went to myth-making, and sun-heroizing,
+himself hero-maker and the hero in quest of the immemorable
+treasure difficult of attainment.
+
+Either must he attain the treasure--for so ran the inexorable logic
+of the shadow-land of the unconscious--or else sink into the all-
+devouring sea, the blackness eater of the light that swallowed to
+extinction the sun each night . . . the sun that arose ever in
+rebirth next morning in the east, and that had become to man man's
+first symbol of immortality through rebirth.  All this, in the
+deeps of his unconsciousness (the shadowy western land of
+descending light), was the near dusk of Death down into which he
+slowly ebbed.
+
+But how to escape this monster of the dark that from within him
+slowly swallowed him?  Too deep-sunk was he to dream of escape or
+feel the prod of desire to escape.  For him reality had ceased.
+Nor from within the darkened chamber of himself could reality
+recrudesce.  His years were too heavy upon him, the debility of
+disease and the lethargy and torpor of the silence and the cold
+were too profound.  Only from without could reality impact upon him
+and reawake within him an awareness of reality.  Otherwise he would
+ooze down through the shadow-realm of the unconscious into the all-
+darkness of extinction.
+
+But it came, the smash of reality from without, crashing upon his
+ear drums in a loud, explosive snort.  For twenty days, in a
+temperature that had never risen above fifty below, no breath of
+wind had blown movement, no slightest sound had broken the silence.
+Like the smoker on the opium couch refocusing his eyes from the
+spacious walls of dream to the narrow confines of the mean little
+room, so Old Tarwater stared vague-eyed before him across his dying
+fire, at a huge moose that stared at him in startlement, dragging a
+wounded leg, manifesting all signs of extreme exhaustion; it, too,
+had been straying blindly in the shadow-land, and had wakened to
+reality only just ere it stepped into Tarwater's fire.
+
+He feebly slipped the large fur mitten lined with thickness of wool
+from his right hand.  Upon trial he found the trigger finger too
+numb for movement.  Carefully, slowly, through long minutes, he
+worked the bare hand inside his blankets, up under his fur parka,
+through the chest openings of his shirts, and into the slightly
+warm hollow of his left arm-pit.  Long minutes passed ere the
+finger could move, when, with equal slowness of caution, he
+gathered his rifle to his shoulder and drew bead upon the great
+animal across the fire.
+
+At the shot, of the two shadow-wanderers, the one reeled downward
+to the dark and the other reeled upward to the light, swaying
+drunkenly on his scurvy-ravaged legs, shivering with nervousness
+and cold, rubbing swimming eyes with shaking fingers, and staring
+at the real world all about him that had returned to him with such
+sickening suddenness.  He shook himself together, and realized that
+for long, how long he did not know, he had bedded in the arms of
+Death.  He spat, with definite intention, heard the spittle crackle
+in the frost, and judged it must be below and far below sixty
+below.  In truth, that day at Fort Yukon, the spirit thermometer
+registered seventy-five degrees below zero, which, since freezing-
+point is thirty-two above, was equivalent to one hundred and seven
+degrees of frost.
+
+Slowly Tarwater's brain reasoned to action.  Here, in the vast
+alone, dwelt Death.  Here had come two wounded moose.  With the
+clearing of the sky after the great cold came on, he had located
+his bearings, and he knew that both wounded moose had trailed to
+him from the east.  Therefore, in the east, were men--whites or
+Indians he could not tell, but at any rate men who might stand by
+him in his need and help moor him to reality above the sea of dark.
+
+He moved slowly, but he moved in reality, girding himself with
+rifle, ammunition, matches, and a pack of twenty pounds of moose-
+meat.  Then, an Argus rejuvenated, albeit lame of both legs and
+tottery, he turned his back on the perilous west and limped into
+the sun-arising, re-birthing east. . . .
+
+Days later--how many days later he was never to know--dreaming
+dreams and seeing visions, cackling his old gold-chant of Forty-
+Nine, like one drowning and swimming feebly to keep his
+consciousness above the engulfing dark, he came out upon the snow-
+slope to a canyon and saw below smoke rising and men who ceased
+from work to gaze at him.  He tottered down the hill to them, still
+singing; and when he ceased from lack of breath they called him
+variously:  Santa Claus, Old Christmas, Whiskers, the Last of the
+Mohicans, and Father Christmas.  And when he stood among them he
+stood very still, without speech, while great tears welled out of
+his eyes.  He cried silently, a long time, till, as if suddenly
+bethinking himself, he sat down in the snow with much creaking and
+crackling of his joints, and from this low vantage point toppled
+sidewise and fainted calmly and easily away.
+
+In less than a week Old Tarwater was up and limping about the
+housework of the cabin, cooking and dish-washing for the five men
+of the creek.  Genuine sourdoughs (pioneers) they were, tough and
+hard-bitten, who had been buried so deeply inside the Circle that
+they did not know there was a Klondike Strike.  The news he brought
+them was their first word of it.  They lived on an almost straight-
+meat diet of moose, caribou, and smoked salmon, eked out with wild
+berries and somewhat succulent wild roots they had stocked up with
+in the summer.  They had forgotten the taste of coffee, made fire
+with a burning glass, carried live fire-sticks with them wherever
+they travelled, and in their pipes smoked dry leaves that bit the
+tongue and were pungent to the nostrils.
+
+Three years before, they had prospected from the head-reaches of
+the Koyokuk northward and clear across to the mouth of the
+Mackenzie on the Arctic Ocean.  Here, on the whaleships, they had
+beheld their last white men and equipped themselves with the last
+white man's grub, consisting principally of salt and smoking
+tobacco.  Striking south and west on the long traverse to the
+junction of the Yukon and Porcupine at Fort Yukon, they had found
+gold on this creek and remained over to work the ground.
+
+They hailed the advent of Tarwater with joy, never tired of
+listening to his tales of Forty-Nine, and rechristened him Old
+Hero.  Also, with tea made from spruce needles, with concoctions
+brewed from the inner willow bark, and with sour and bitter roots
+and bulbs from the ground, they dosed his scurvy out of him, so
+that he ceased limping and began to lay on flesh over his bony
+framework.  Further, they saw no reason at all why he should not
+gather a rich treasure of gold from the ground.
+
+"Don't know about all of three hundred thousand," they told him one
+morning, at breakfast, ere they departed to their work, "but how'd
+a hundred thousand do, Old Hero?  That's what we figure a claim is
+worth, the ground being badly spotted, and we've already staked
+your location notices."
+
+"Well, boys," Old Tarwater answered, "and thanking you kindly, all
+I can say is that a hundred thousand will do nicely, and very
+nicely, for a starter.  Of course, I ain't goin' to stop till I get
+the full three hundred thousand.  That's what I come into the
+country for."
+
+They laughed and applauded his ambition and reckoned they'd have to
+hunt a richer creek for him.  And Old Hero reckoned that as the
+spring came on and he grew spryer, he'd have to get out and do a
+little snooping around himself.
+
+"For all anybody knows," he said, pointing to a hillside across the
+creek bottom, "the moss under the snow there may be plumb rooted in
+nugget gold."
+
+He said no more, but as the sun rose higher and the days grew
+longer and warmer, he gazed often across the creek at the definite
+bench-formation half way up the hill.  And, one day, when the thaw
+was in full swing, he crossed the stream and climbed to the bench.
+Exposed patches of ground had already thawed an inch deep.  On one
+such patch he stopped, gathered a bunch of moss in his big gnarled
+hands, and ripped it out by the roots.  The sun smouldered on dully
+glistening yellow.  He shook the handful of moss, and coarse
+nuggets, like gravel, fell to the ground.  It was the Golden Fleece
+ready for the shearing.
+
+Not entirely unremembered in Alaskan annals is the summer stampede
+of 1898 from Fort Yukon to the bench diggings of Tarwater Hill.
+And when Tarwater sold his holdings to the Bowdie interests for a
+sheer half-million and faced for California, he rode a mule over a
+new-cut trail, with convenient road houses along the way, clear to
+the steamboat landing at Fort Yukon.
+
+At the first meal on the ocean-going steamship out of St. Michaels,
+a waiter, greyish-haired, pain-ravaged of face, scurvy-twisted of
+body, served him.  Old Tarwater was compelled to look him over
+twice in order to make certain he was Charles Crayton.
+
+"Got it bad, eh, son?" Tarwater queried.
+
+"Just my luck," the other complained, after recognition and
+greeting.  "Only one of the party that the scurvy attacked.  I've
+been through hell.  The other three are all at work and healthy,
+getting grub-stake to prospect up White River this winter.  Anson's
+earning twenty-five a day at carpentering, Liverpool getting twenty
+logging for the saw-mill, and Big Bill's getting forty a day as
+chief sawyer.  I tried my best, and if it hadn't been for scurvy .
+. ."
+
+"Sure, son, you done your best, which ain't much, you being
+naturally irritable and hard from too much business.  Now I'll tell
+you what.  You ain't fit to work crippled up this way.  I'll pay
+your passage with the captain in kind remembrance of the voyage you
+gave me, and you can lay up and take it easy the rest of the trip.
+And what are your circumstances when you land at San Francisco?"
+
+Charles Crayton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Tell you what," Tarwater continued.  "There's work on the ranch
+for you till you can start business again."
+
+"I could manage your business for you--" Charles began eagerly.
+
+"No, siree," Tarwater declared emphatically.  "But there's always
+post-holes to dig, and cordwood to chop, and the climate's fine . .
+. "
+
+Tarwater arrived home a true prodigal grandfather for whom the
+fatted calf was killed and ready.  But first, ere he sat down at
+table, he must stroll out and around.  And sons and daughters of
+his flesh and of the law needs must go with him fulsomely eating
+out of the gnarled old hand that had half a million to disburse.
+He led the way, and no opinion he slyly uttered was preposterous or
+impossible enough to draw dissent from his following.  Pausing by
+the ruined water wheel which he had built from the standing timber,
+his face beamed as he gazed across the stretches of Tarwater
+Valley, and on and up the far heights to the summit of Tarwater
+Mountain--now all his again.
+
+A thought came to him that made him avert his face and blow his
+nose in order to hide the twinkle in his eyes.  Still attended by
+the entire family, he strolled on to the dilapidated barn.  He
+picked up an age-weathered single-tree from the ground.
+
+"William," he said.  "Remember that little conversation we had just
+before I started to Klondike?  Sure, William, you remember.  You
+told me I was crazy.  And I said my father'd have walloped the tar
+out of me with a single-tree if I'd spoke to him that way."
+
+"Aw, but that was only foolin'," William temporized.
+
+William was a grizzled man of forty-five, and his wife and grown
+sons stood in the group, curiously watching Grandfather Tarwater
+take off his coat and hand it to Mary to hold.
+
+"William--come here," he commanded imperatively.
+
+No matter how reluctantly, William came.
+
+"Just a taste, William, son, of what my father give me often
+enough," Old Tarwater crooned, as he laid on his son's back and
+shoulders with the single-tree.  "Observe, I ain't hitting you on
+the head.  My father had a gosh-wollickin' temper and never drew
+the line at heads when he went after tar.--Don't jerk your elbows
+back that way!  You're likely to get a crack on one by accident.
+And just tell me one thing, William, son:  is there nary notion in
+your head that I'm crazy?"
+
+"No!" William yelped out in pain, as he danced about.  "You ain't
+crazy, father of course you ain't crazy!"
+
+"You said it," Old Tarwater remarked sententiously, tossing the
+single-tree aside and starting to struggle into his coat.
+
+"Now let's all go in and eat."
+
+Glen Ellen, California,
+September 14, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+STORY:  THE PRINCESS
+
+
+
+
+A fire burned cheerfully in the jungle camp, and beside the fire
+lolled a cheerful-seeming though horrible-appearing man.  This was
+a hobo jungle, pitched in a thin strip of woods that lay between a
+railroad embankment and the bank of a river.  But no hobo was the
+man.  So deep-sunk was he in the social abyss that a proper hobo
+would not sit by the same fire with him.  A gay-cat, who is an
+ignorant new-comer on the "Road," might sit with such as he, but
+only long enough to learn better.  Even low down bindle-stiffs and
+stew-bums, after a once-over, would have passed this man by.  A
+genuine hobo, a couple of punks, or a bunch of tender-yeared road-
+kids might have gone through his rags for any stray pennies or
+nickels and kicked him out into the darkness.  Even an alki-stiff
+would have reckoned himself immeasurably superior.
+
+For this man was that hybrid of tramp-land, an alki-stiff that has
+degenerated into a stew-bum, with so little self-respect that he
+will never "boil-up," and with so little pride that he will eat out
+of a garbage can.  He was truly horrible-appearing.  He might have
+been sixty years of age; he might have been ninety.  His garments
+might have been discarded by a rag-picker.  Beside him, an unrolled
+bundle showed itself as consisting of a ragged overcoat and
+containing an empty and smoke-blackened tomato can, an empty and
+battered condensed milk can, some dog-meat partly wrapped in brown
+paper and evidently begged from some butcher-shop, a carrot that
+had been run over in the street by a wagon-wheel, three greenish-
+cankered and decayed potatoes, and a sugar-bun with a mouthful
+bitten from it and rescued from the gutter, as was made patent by
+the gutter-filth that still encrusted it.
+
+A prodigious growth of whiskers, greyish-dirty and untrimmed for
+years, sprouted from his face.  This hirsute growth should have
+been white, but the season was summer and it had not been exposed
+to a rain-shower for some time.  What was visible of the face
+looked as if at some period it had stopped a hand-grenade.  The
+nose was so variously malformed in its healed brokenness that there
+was no bridge, while one nostril, the size of a pea, opened
+downward, and the other, the size of a robin's egg, tilted upward
+to the sky.  One eye, of normal size, dim-brown and misty, bulged
+to the verge of popping out, and as if from senility wept copiously
+and continuously.  The other eye, scarcely larger than a squirrel's
+and as uncannily bright, twisted up obliquely into the hairy scar
+of a bone-crushed eyebrow.  And he had but one arm.
+
+Yet was he cheerful.  On his face, in mild degree, was depicted
+sensuous pleasure as he lethargically scratched his ribs with his
+one hand.  He pawed over his food-scraps, debated, then drew a
+twelve-ounce druggist bottle from his inside coat-pocket.  The
+bottle was full of a colourless liquid, the contemplation of which
+made his little eye burn brighter and quickened his movements.
+Picking up the tomato can, he arose, went down the short path to
+the river, and returned with the can filled with not-nice river
+water.  In the condensed milk can he mixed one part of water with
+two parts of fluid from the bottle.  This colourless fluid was
+druggist's alcohol, and as such is known in tramp-land as "alki."
+
+Slow footsteps, coming down the side of the railroad embankment,
+alarmed him ere he could drink.  Placing the can carefully upon the
+ground between his legs, he covered it with his hat and waited
+anxiously whatever impended.
+
+Out of the darkness emerged a man as filthy ragged as he.  The new-
+comer, who might have been fifty, and might have been sixty, was
+grotesquely fat.  He bulged everywhere.  He was composed of bulges.
+His bulbous nose was the size and shape of a turnip.  His eyelids
+bulged and his blue eyes bulged in competition with them.  In many
+places the seams of his garments had parted across the bulges of
+body.  His calves grew into his feet, for the broken elastic sides
+of his Congress gaiters were swelled full with the fat of him.  One
+arm only he sported, from the shoulder of which was suspended a
+small and tattered bundle with the mud caked dry on the outer
+covering from the last place he had pitched his doss.  He advanced
+with tentative caution, made sure of the harmlessness of the man
+beside the fire, and joined him.
+
+"Hello, grandpa," the new-comer greeted, then paused to stare at
+the other's flaring, sky-open nostril.  "Say, Whiskers, how'd ye
+keep the night dew out of that nose o' yourn?"
+
+Whiskers growled an incoherence deep in his throat and spat into
+the fire in token that he was not pleased by the question.
+
+"For the love of Mike," the fat man chuckled, "if you got caught
+out in a rainstorm without an umbrella you'd sure drown, wouldn't
+you?"
+
+"Can it, Fatty, can it," Whiskers muttered wearily.  "They ain't
+nothin' new in that line of chatter.  Even the bulls hand it out to
+me."
+
+"But you can still drink, I hope"; Fatty at the same time mollified
+and invited, with his one hand deftly pulling the slip-knots that
+fastened his bundle.
+
+From within the bundle he brought to light a twelve-ounce bottle of
+alki.  Footsteps coming down the embankment alarmed him, and he hid
+the bottle under his hat on the ground between his legs.
+
+But the next comer proved to be not merely one of their own ilk,
+but likewise to have only one arm.  So forbidding of aspect was he
+that greetings consisted of no more than grunts.  Huge-boned, tall,
+gaunt to cadaverousness, his face a dirty death's head, he was as
+repellent a nightmare of old age as ever Dore imagined.  His
+toothless, thin-lipped mouth was a cruel and bitter slash under a
+great curved nose that almost met the chin and that was like a
+buzzard's beak.  His one hand, lean and crooked, was a talon.  The
+beady grey eyes, unblinking and unwavering, were bitter as death,
+as bleak as absolute zero and as merciless.  His presence was a
+chill, and Whiskers and Fatty instinctively drew together for
+protection against the unguessed threat of him.  Watching his
+chance, privily, Whiskers snuggled a chunk of rock several pounds
+in weigh close to his hand if need for action should arise.  Fatty
+duplicated the performance.
+
+Then both sat licking their lips, guiltily embarrassed, while the
+unblinking eyes of the terrible one bored into them, now into one,
+now into another, and then down at the rock-chunks of their
+preparedness.
+
+"Huh!" sneered the terrible one, with such dreadfulness of menace
+as to cause Whiskers and Fatty involuntarily to close their hands
+down on their cave-man's weapons.
+
+"Huh!" the other repeated, reaching his one talon into his side
+coat pocket with swift definiteness.  "A hell of a chance you two
+cheap bums 'd have with me."
+
+The talon emerged, clutching ready for action a six-pound iron
+quoit.
+
+"We ain't lookin' for trouble, Slim," Fatty quavered.
+
+"Who in hell are you to call me 'Slim'?" came the snarling answer.
+
+"Me?  I'm just Fatty, an' seein' 's I never seen you before--"
+
+"An' I suppose that's Whiskers, there, with the gay an' festive
+lamp tan-going into his eyebrow an' the God-forgive-us nose joy-
+riding all over his mug?"
+
+"It'll do, it'll do," Whiskers muttered uncomfortably.  "One
+monica's as good as another, I find, at my time of life.  And
+everybody hands it out to me anyway.  And I need an umbrella when
+it rains to keep from getting drowned, an' all the rest of it."
+
+"I ain't used to company--don't like it," Slim growled.  "So if you
+guys want to stick around, mind your step, that's all, mind your
+step."
+
+He fished from his pocket a cigar stump, self-evidently shot from
+the gutter, and prepared to put it in his mouth to chew.  Then he
+changed his mind, glared at his companions savagely, and unrolled
+his bundle.  Appeared in his hand a druggist's bottle of alki.
+
+"Well," he snarled, "I suppose I gotta give you cheap skates a
+drink when I ain't got more'n enough for a good petrification for
+myself."
+
+Almost a softening flicker of light was imminent in his withered
+face as he beheld the others proudly lift their hats and exhibit
+their own supplies.
+
+"Here's some water for the mixin's," Whiskers said, proffering his
+tomato-can of river slush.  "Stockyards just above," he added
+apologetically.  "But they say--"
+
+"Huh!" Slim snapped short, mixing the drink.  "I've drunk worse'n
+stockyards in my time."
+
+Yet when all was ready, cans of alki in their solitary hands, the
+three things that had once been men hesitated, as if of old habit,
+and next betrayed shame as if at self-exposure.
+
+Whiskers was the first to brazen it.
+
+"I've sat in at many a finer drinking," he bragged.
+
+"With the pewter," Slim sneered.
+
+"With the silver," Whiskers corrected.
+
+Slim turned a scorching eye-interrogation on Fatty.
+
+Fatty nodded.
+
+"Beneath the salt," said Slim.
+
+"Above it," came Fatty's correction.  "I was born above it, and
+I've never travelled second class.  First or steerage, but no
+intermediate in mine."
+
+"Yourself?" Whiskers queried of Slim.
+
+"In broken glass to the Queen, God bless her," Slim answered,
+solemnly, without snarl or sneer.
+
+"In the pantry?" Fatty insinuated.
+
+Simultaneously Slim reached for his quoit, and Whiskers and Fatty
+for their rocks.
+
+"Now don't let's get feverish," Fatty said, dropping his own
+weapon.  "We aren't scum.  We're gentlemen.  Let's drink like
+gentlemen."
+
+"Let it be a real drinking," Whiskers approved.
+
+"Let's get petrified," Slim agreed.  "Many a distillery's flowed
+under the bridge since we were gentlemen; but let's forget the long
+road we've travelled since, and hit our doss in the good old
+fashion in which every gentleman went to bed when we were young."
+
+"My father done it--did it," Fatty concurred and corrected, as old
+recollections exploded long-sealed brain-cells of connotation and
+correct usage.
+
+The other two nodded a descent from similar fathers, and elevated
+their tin cans of alcohol.
+
+
+By the time each had finished his own bottle and from his rags
+fished forth a second one, their brains were well-mellowed and a-
+glow, although they had not got around to telling their real names.
+But their English had improved.  They spoke it correctly, while the
+argo of tramp-land ceased from their lips.
+
+"It's my constitution," Whiskers was explaining.  "Very few men
+could go through what I have and live to tell the tale.  And I
+never took any care of myself.  If what the moralists and the
+physiologists say were true, I'd have been dead long ago.  And it's
+the same with you two.  Look at us, at our advanced years,
+carousing as the young ones don't dare, sleeping out in the open on
+the ground, never sheltered from frost nor rain nor storm, never
+afraid of pneumonia or rheumatism that would put half the young
+ones on their backs in hospital."
+
+He broke off to mix another drink, and Fatty took up the tale.
+
+"And we've had our fun," he boasted, "and speaking of sweethearts
+and all," he cribbed from Kipling, "'We've rogued and we've ranged-
+-'"
+
+"'In our time,'" Slim completed the crib for him.
+
+"I should say so, I should say so," Fatty confirmed.  "And been
+loved by princesses--at least I have."
+
+"Go on and tell us about it," Whiskers urged.  "The night's young,
+and why shouldn't we remember back to the roofs of kings?"
+
+Nothing loth, Fatty cleared his throat for the recital and cast
+about in his mind for the best way to begin.
+
+"It must be known that I came of good family.  Percival Delaney,
+let us say, yes, let us say Percival Delaney, was not unknown at
+Oxford once upon a time--not for scholarship, I am frank to admit;
+but the gay young dogs of that day, if any be yet alive, would
+remember him--"
+
+"My people came over with the Conqueror," Whiskers interrupted,
+extending his hand to Fatty's in acknowledgment of the
+introduction.
+
+"What name?" Fatty queried.  "I did not seem quite to catch it."
+
+"Delarouse, Chauncey Delarouse.  The name will serve as well as
+any."
+
+Both completed the handshake and glanced to Slim.
+
+"Oh, well, while we're about it . . . "  Fatty urged.
+
+"Bruce Cadogan Cavendish," Slim growled morosely.  "Go on,
+Percival, with your princesses and the roofs of kings."
+
+"Oh, I was a rare young devil," Percival obliged, "after I played
+ducks and drakes at home and sported out over the world.  And I was
+some figure of a man before I lost my shape--polo, steeple-chasing,
+boxing.  I won medals at buckjumping in Australia, and I held more
+than several swimming records from the quarter of a mile up.  Women
+turned their heads to look when I went by.  The women!  God bless
+them!"
+
+And Fatty, alias Percival Delaney, a grotesque of manhood, put his
+bulgy hand to his puffed lips and kissed audibly into the starry
+vault of the sky.
+
+"And the Princess!" he resumed, with another kiss to the stars.
+"She was as fine a figure of a woman as I was a man, as high-
+spirited and courageous, as reckless and dare-devilish.  Lord,
+Lord, in the water she was a mermaid, a sea-goddess.  And when it
+came to blood, beside her I was parvenu.  Her royal line traced
+back into the mists of antiquity.
+
+"She was not a daughter of a fair-skinned folk.  Tawny golden was
+she, with golden-brown eyes, and her hair that fell to her knees
+was blue-black and straight, with just the curly tendrilly tendency
+that gives to woman's hair its charm.  Oh, there were no kinks in
+it, any more than were there kinks in the hair of her entire
+genealogy.  For she was Polynesian, glowing, golden, lovely and
+lovable, royal Polynesian."
+
+Again he paused to kiss his hand to the memory of her, and Slim,
+alias Bruce Cadogan Cavendish, took advantage to interject:
+
+"Huh!  Maybe you didn't shine in scholarship, but at least you
+gleaned a vocabulary out of Oxford."
+
+"And in the South Seas garnered a better vocabulary from the
+lexicon of Love," Percival was quick on the uptake.
+
+"It was the island of Talofa," he went on, "meaning love, the Isle
+of Love, and it was her island.  Her father, the king, an old man,
+sat on his mats with paralysed knees and drank squareface gin all
+day and most of the night, out of grief, sheer grief.  She, my
+princess, was the only issue, her brother having been lost in their
+double canoe in a hurricane while coming up from a voyage to Samoa.
+And among the Polynesians the royal women have equal right with the
+men to rule.  In fact, they trace their genealogies always by the
+female line."
+
+To this both Chauncey Delarouse and Bruce Cadogan Cavendish nodded
+prompt affirmation.
+
+"Ah," said Percival, "I perceive you both know the South Seas,
+wherefore, without undue expenditure of verbiage on my part, I am
+assured that you will appreciate the charm of my princess, the
+Princess Tui-nui of Talofa, the Princess of the Isle of Love."
+
+He kissed his hand to her, sipped from his condensed milk can a
+man-size drink of druggist's alcohol, and to her again kissed her
+hand.
+
+"But she was coy, and ever she fluttered near to me but never near
+enough.  When my arm went out to her to girdle her, presto, she was
+not there.  I knew, as never before, nor since, the thousand dear
+and delightful anguishes of love frustrated but ever resilient and
+beckoned on by the very goddess of love."
+
+"Some vocabulary," Bruce Cadogan Cavendish muttered in aside to
+Chauncey Delarouse.  But Percival Delaney was not to be deterred.
+He kissed his pudgy hand aloft into the night and held warmly on.
+
+"No fond agonies of rapture deferred that were not lavished upon me
+by my dear Princess, herself ever a luring delight of promise
+flitting just beyond my reach.  Every sweet lover's inferno
+unguessed of by Dante she led me through.  Ah!  Those swooning
+tropic nights, under our palm trees, the distant surf a langourous
+murmur as from some vast sea shell of mystery, when she, my
+Princess, all but melted to my yearning, and with her laughter,
+that was as silver strings by buds and blossoms smitten, all but
+made lunacy of my lover's ardency.
+
+"It was by my wrestling with the champions of Talofa that I first
+interested her.  It was by my prowess at swimming that I awoke her.
+And it was by a certain swimming deed that I won from her more than
+coquettish smiles and shy timidities of feigned retreat.
+
+"We were squidding that day, out on the reef--you know how,
+undoubtedly, diving down the face of the wall of the reef, five
+fathoms, ten fathoms, any depth within reason, and shoving our
+squid-sticks into the likely holes and crannies of the coral where
+squid might be lairing.  With the squid-stick, bluntly sharp at
+both ends, perhaps a foot long, and held crosswise in the hand, the
+trick was to gouge any lazying squid until he closed his tentacles
+around fist, stick and arm.--Then you had him, and came to the
+surface with him, and hit him in the head which is in the centre of
+him, and peeled him off into the waiting canoe. . . . And to think
+I used to do that!"
+
+Percival Delaney paused a moment, a glimmer of awe on his rotund
+face, as he contemplated the mighty picture of his youth.
+
+"Why, I've pulled out a squid with tentacles eight feet long, and
+done it under fifty feet of water.  I could stay down four minutes.
+I've gone down, with a coral-rock to sink me, in a hundred and ten
+feet to clear a fouled anchor.  And I could back-dive with a once-
+over and go in feet-first from eighty feet above the surface--"
+
+"Quit it, delete it, cease it," Chauncey Delarouse admonished
+testily.  "Tell of the Princess.  That's what makes old blood leap
+again.  Almost can I see her.  Was she wonderful?"
+
+Percival Delaney kissed unutterable affirmation.
+
+"I have said she was a mermaid.  She was.  I know she swam thirty-
+six hours before being rescued, after her schooner was capsized in
+a double-squall.  I have seen her do ninety feet and bring up pearl
+shell in each hand.  She was wonderful.  As a woman she was
+ravishing, sublime.  I have said she was a sea-goddess.  She was.
+Oh, for a Phidias or a Praxiteles to have made the wonder of her
+body immortal!
+
+"And that day, out for squid on the reef, I was almost sick for
+her.  Mad--I know I was mad for her.  We would step over the side
+from the big canoe, and swim down, side by side, into the delicious
+depths of cool and colour, and she would look at me, as we swam,
+and with her eyes tantalize me to further madness.  And at last,
+down, far down, I lost myself and reached for her.  She eluded me
+like the mermaid she was, and I saw the laughter on her face as she
+fled.  She fled deeper, and I knew I had her for I was between her
+and the surface; but in the muck coral sand of the bottom she made
+a churning with her squid stick.  It was the old trick to escape a
+shark.  And she worked it on me, rolling the water so that I could
+not see her.  And when I came up, she was there ahead of me,
+clinging to the side of the canoe and laughing.
+
+"Almost I would not be denied.  But not for nothing was she a
+princess.  She rested her hand on my arm and compelled me to
+listen.  We should play a game, she said, enter into a competition
+for which should get the more squid, the biggest squid, and the
+smallest squid.  Since the wagers were kisses, you can well imagine
+I went down on the first next dive with soul aflame.
+
+"I got no squid.  Never again in all my life have I dived for
+squid.  Perhaps we were five fathoms down and exploring the face of
+the reefwall for lurking places of our prey, when it happened.  I
+had found a likely lair and just proved it empty, when I felt or
+sensed the nearness of something inimical.  I turned.  There it
+was, alongside of me, and no mere fish-shark.  Fully a dozen feet
+in length, with the unmistakable phosphorescent cat's eye gleaming
+like a drowning star, I knew it for what it was, a tiger shark.
+
+"Not ten feet to the right, probing a coral fissure with her squid
+stick, was the Princess, and the tiger shark was heading directly
+for her.  My totality of thought was precipitated to consciousness
+in a single all-embracing flash.  The man-eater must be deflected
+from her, and what was I, except a mad lover who would gladly fight
+and die, or more gladly fight and live, for his beloved?  Remember,
+she was the woman wonderful, and I was aflame for her.
+
+"Knowing fully the peril of my act, I thrust the blunt-sharp end of
+my squid-stick into the side of the shark, much as one would
+attract a passing acquaintance with a thumb-nudge in the ribs.  And
+the man-eater turned on me.  You know the South Seas, and you know
+that the tiger shark, like the bald-face grizzly of Alaska, never
+gives trail.  The combat, fathoms deep under the sea, was on--if by
+combat may be named such a one-sided struggle.
+
+"The Princess unaware, caught her squid and rose to the surface.
+The man-eater rushed me.  I fended him off with both hands on his
+nose above his thousand-toothed open mouth, so that he backed me
+against the sharp coral.  The scars are there to this day.
+Whenever I tried to rise, he rushed me, and I could not remain down
+there indefinitely without air.  Whenever he rushed me, I fended
+him off with my hands on his nose.  And I would have escaped
+unharmed, except for the slip of my right hand.  Into his mouth it
+went to the elbow.  His jaws closed, just below the elbow.  You
+know how a shark's teeth are.  Once in they cannot be released.
+They must go through to complete the bite, but they cannot go
+through heavy bone.  So, from just below the elbow he stripped the
+bone clean to the articulation of the wrist-joint, where his teeth
+met and my good right hand became his for an appetizer.
+
+"But while he was doing this, I drove the thumb of my left hand, to
+the hilt into his eye-orifice and popped out his eye.  This did not
+stop him.  The meat had maddened him.  He pursued the gushing stump
+of my wrist.  Half a dozen times I fended with my intact arm.  Then
+he got the poor mangled arm again, closed down, and stripped the
+meat off the bone from the shoulder down to the elbow-joint, where
+his teeth met and he was free of his second mouthful of me.  But,
+at the same time, with my good arm, I thumbed out his remaining
+eye."
+
+Percival Delaney shrugged his shoulders, ere he resumed.
+
+"From above, those in the canoe had beheld the entire happening and
+were loud in praise of my deed.  To this day they still sing the
+song of me, and tell the tale of me.  And the Princess."  His pause
+was brief but significant.  "The Princess married me. . . . Oh,
+well-a-day and lack-a-day, the whirligig of time and fortune, the
+topsyturviness of luck, the wooden shoe going up and the polished
+heel descending a French gunboat, a conquered island kingdom of
+Oceania, to-day ruled over by a peasant-born, unlettered, colonial
+gendarme, and . . . "
+
+He completed the sentence and the tale by burying his face in the
+down-tilted mouth of the condensed milk can and by gurgling the
+corrosive drink down his throat in thirsty gulps.
+
+
+After an appropriate pause, Chauncey Delarouse, otherwise Whiskers,
+took up the tale.
+
+"Far be it from me to boast of no matter what place of birth I have
+descended from to sit here by this fire with such as . . . as
+chance along.  I may say, however, that I, too, was once a
+considerable figure of a man.  I may add that it was horses, plus
+parents too indulgent, that exiled me out over the world.  I may
+still wonder to query:  'Are Dover's cliffs still white?'"
+
+"Huh!" Bruce Cadogan Cavendish sneered.  "Next you'll be asking:
+'How fares the old Lord Warden?'"
+
+"And I took every liberty, and vainly, with a constitution that was
+iron," Whiskers hurried on.  "Here I am with my three score and ten
+behind me, and back on that long road have I buried many a
+youngster that was as rare and devilish as I, but who could not
+stand the pace.  I knew the worst too young.  And now I know the
+worst too old.  But there was a time, alas all too short, when I
+knew, the best.
+
+"I, too, kiss my hand to the Princess of my heart.  She was truly a
+princess, Polynesian, a thousand miles and more away to the
+eastward and the south from Delaney's Isle of Love.  The natives of
+all around that part of the South Seas called it the Jolly Island.
+Their own name, the name of the people who dwelt thereon,
+translates delicately and justly into 'The Island of Tranquil
+Laughter.'  On the chart you will find the erroneous name given to
+it by the old navigators to be Manatomana.  The seafaring gentry
+the round ocean around called it the Adamless Eden.  And the
+missionaries for a time called it God's Witness--so great had been
+their success at converting the inhabitants.  As for me, it was,
+and ever shall be, Paradise.
+
+"It was MY Paradise, for it was there my Princess lived.  John
+Asibeli Tungi was king.  He was full-blooded native, descended out
+of the oldest and highest chief-stock that traced back to Manua
+which was the primeval sea home of the race.  Also was he known as
+John the Apostate.  He lived a long life and apostasized
+frequently.  First converted by the Catholics, he threw down the
+idols, broke the tabus, cleaned out the native priests, executed a
+few of the recalcitrant ones, and sent all his subjects to church.
+
+"Next he fell for the traders, who developed in him a champagne
+thirst, and he shipped off the Catholic priests to New Zealand.
+The great majority of his subjects always followed his lead, and,
+having no religion at all, ensued the time of the Great
+Licentiousness, when by all South Seas missionaries his island, in
+sermons, was spoken of as Babylon.
+
+"But the traders ruined his digestion with too much champagne, and
+after several years he fell for the Gospel according to the
+Methodists, sent his people to church, and cleaned up the beach and
+the trading crowd so spick and span that he would not permit them
+to smoke a pipe out of doors on Sunday, and, fined one of the chief
+traders one hundred gold sovereigns for washing his schooner's
+decks on the Sabbath morn.
+
+"That was the time of the Blue Laws, but perhaps it was too
+rigorous for King John.  Off he packed the Methodists, one fine
+day, exiled several hundred of his people to Samoa for sticking to
+Methodism, and, of all things, invented a religion of his own, with
+himself the figure-head of worship.  In this he was aided and
+abetted by a renegade Fijian.  This lasted five years.  Maybe he
+grew tired of being God, or maybe it was because the Fijian
+decamped with the six thousand pounds in the royal treasury; but at
+any rate the Second Reformed Wesleyans got him, and his entire
+kingdom went Wesleyan.  The pioneer Wesleyan missionary he actually
+made prime minister, and what he did to the trading crowd was a
+caution.  Why, in the end, King John's kingdom was blacklisted and
+boycotted by the traders till the revenues diminished to zero, the
+people went bankrupt, and King John couldn't borrow a shilling from
+his most powerful chief.
+
+"By this time he was getting old, and philosophic, and tolerant,
+and spiritually atavistic.  He fired out the Second Reformed
+Wesleyans, called back the exiles from Samoa, invited in the
+traders, held a general love-feast, took the lid off, proclaimed
+religious liberty and high tariff, and as for himself went back to
+the worship of his ancestors, dug up the idols, reinstated a few
+octogenarian priests, and observed the tabus.  All of which was
+lovely for the traders, and prosperity reigned.  Of course, most of
+his subjects followed him back into heathen worship.  Yet quite a
+sprinkling of Catholics, Methodists and Wesleyans remained true to
+their beliefs and managed to maintain a few squalid, one-horse
+churches.  But King John didn't mind, any more than did he the high
+times of the traders along the beach.  Everything went, so long as
+the taxes were paid.  Even when his wife, Queen Mamare, elected to
+become a Baptist, and invited in a little, weazened, sweet-
+spirited, club-footed Baptist missionary, King John did not object.
+All he insisted on was that these wandering religions should be
+self-supporting and not feed a pennyworth's out of the royal
+coffers.
+
+"And now the threads of my recital draw together in the paragon of
+female exquisiteness--my Princess."
+
+Whiskers paused, placed carefully on the ground his half-full
+condensed milk can with which he had been absently toying, and
+kissed the fingers of his one hand audibly aloft.
+
+"She was the daughter of Queen Mamare.  She was the woman
+wonderful.  Unlike the Diana type of Polynesian, she was almost
+ethereal.  She WAS ethereal, sublimated by purity, as shy and
+modest as a violet, as fragile-slender as a lily, and her eyes,
+luminous and shrinking tender, were as asphodels on the sward of
+heaven.  She was all flower, and fire, and dew.  Hers was the
+sweetness of the mountain rose, the gentleness of the dove.  And
+she was all of good as well as all of beauty, devout in her belief
+in her mother's worship, which was the worship introduced by
+Ebenezer Naismith, the Baptist missionary.  But make no mistake.
+She was no mere sweet spirit ripe for the bosom of Abraham.  All of
+exquisite deliciousness of woman was she.  She was woman, all
+woman, to the last sensitive quivering atom of her -
+
+"And I?  I was a wastrel of the beach.  The wildest was not so wild
+as I, the keenest not so keen, of all that wild, keen trading
+crowd.  It was esteemed I played the stiffest hand of poker.  I was
+the only living man, white, brown, or black, who dared run the
+Kuni-kuni Passage in the dark.  And on a black night I have done it
+under reefs in a gale of wind.  Well, anyway, I had a bad
+reputation on a beach where there were no good reputations.  I was
+reckless, dangerous, stopped at nothing in fight or frolic; and the
+trading captains used to bring boiler-sheeted prodigies from the
+vilest holes of the South Pacific to try and drink me under the
+table.  I remember one, a calcined Scotchman from the New Hebrides.
+It was a great drinking.  He died of it, and we laded him aboard
+ship, pickled in a cask of trade rum, and sent him back to his own
+place.  A sample, a fair sample, of the antic tricks we cut up on
+the beach of Manatomana.
+
+"And of all unthinkable things, what did I up and do, one day, but
+look upon the Princess to find her good and to fall in love with
+her.  It was the real thing.  I was as mad as a March hare, and
+after that I got only madder.  I reformed.  Think of that!  Think
+of what a slip of a woman can do to a busy, roving man!--By the
+Lord Harry, it's true.  I reformed.  I went to church.  Hear me!  I
+became converted.  I cleared my soul before God and kept my hands--
+I had two then--off the ribald crew of the beach when it laughed at
+this, my latest antic, and wanted to know what was my game.
+
+"I tell you I reformed, and gave myself in passion and sincerity to
+a religious experience that has made me tolerant of all religion
+ever since.  I discharged my best captain for immorality.  So did I
+my cook, and a better never boiled water in Manatomana.  For the
+same reason I discharged my chief clerk.  And for the first time in
+the history of trading my schooners to the westward carried Bibles
+in their stock.  I built a little anchorite bungalow up town on a
+mango-lined street squarely alongside the little house occupied by
+Ebenezer Naismith.  And I made him my pal and comrade, and found
+him a veritable honey pot of sweetnesses and goodnesses.  And he
+was a man, through and through a man.  And he died long after like
+a man, which I would like to tell you about, were the tale of it
+not so deservedly long.
+
+"It was the Princess, more than the missionary, who was responsible
+for my expressing my faith in works, and especially in that
+crowning work, the New Church, Our Church, the Queen-mother's
+church.
+
+"'Our poor church,' she said to me, one night after prayer-meeting.
+I had been converted only a fortnight.  'It is so small its
+congregation can never grow.  And the roof leaks.  And King John,
+my hard-hearted father, will not contribute a penny.  Yet he has a
+big balance in the treasury.  And Manatomana is not poor.  Much
+money is made and squandered, I know.  I hear the gossip of the
+wild ways of the beach.  Less than a month ago you lost more in one
+night, gambling at cards, than the cost of the upkeep of our poor
+church for a year.'
+
+"And I told her it was true, but that it was before I had seen the
+light.  (I'd had an infernal run of bad luck.)  I told her I had
+not tasted liquor since, nor turned a card.  I told her that the
+roof would be repaired at once, by Christian carpenters selected by
+her from the congregation.  But she was filled with the thought of
+a great revival that Ebenezer Naismith could preach--she was a dear
+saint--and she spoke of a great church, saying:
+
+"'You are rich.  You have many schooners, and traders in far
+islands, and I have heard of a great contract you have signed to
+recruit labour for the German plantations of Upolu.  They say, next
+to Sweitzer, you are the richest trader here.  I should love to see
+some use of all this money placed to the glory of God.  It would be
+a noble thing to do, and I should be proud to know the man who
+would do it.'
+
+"I told her that Ebenezer Naismith would preach the revival, and
+that I would build a church great enough in which to house it.
+
+"'As big as the Catholic church?' she asked.
+
+"This was the ruined cathedral, built at the time when the entire
+population was converted, and it was a large order; but I was afire
+with love, and I told her that the church I would build would be
+even bigger.
+
+"'But it will take money,' I explained.  'And it takes time to make
+money.'
+
+"'You have much,' she said.  'Some say you have more money than my
+father, the King.
+
+"'I have more credit,' I explained.  'But you do not understand
+money.  It takes money to have credit.  So, with the money I have,
+and the credit I have, I will work to make more money and credit,
+and the church shall be built.'
+
+"Work!  I was a surprise to myself.  It is an amazement, the amount
+of time a man finds on his hands after he's given up carousing, and
+gambling, and all the time-eating diversions of the beach.  And I
+didn't waste a second of all my new-found time.  Instead I worked
+it overtime.  I did the work of half a dozen men.  I became a
+driver.  My captains made faster runs than ever and earned bigger
+bonuses, as did my supercargoes, who saw to it that my schooners
+did not loaf and dawdle along the way.  And I saw to it that my
+supercargoes did see to it.
+
+"And good!  By the Lord Harry I was so good it hurt.  My conscience
+got so expansive and fine-strung it lamed me across the shoulders
+to carry it around with me.  Why, I even went back over my accounts
+and paid Sweitzer fifty quid I'd jiggered him out of in a deal in
+Fiji three years before.  And I compounded the interest as well.
+
+"Work!  I planted sugar cane--the first commercial planting on
+Manatomana.  I ran in cargoes of kinky-heads from Malaita, which is
+in the Solomons, till I had twelve hundred of the blackbirds
+putting in cane.  And I sent a schooner clear to Hawaii to bring
+back a dismantled sugar mill and a German who said he knew the
+field-end of cane.  And he did, and he charged me three hundred
+dollars screw a month, and I took hold of the mill-end.  I
+installed the mill myself, with the help of several mechanics I
+brought up from Queensland.
+
+"Of course there was a rival.  His name was Motomoe.  He was the
+very highest chief blood next to King John's.  He was full native,
+a strapping, handsome man, with a glowering way of showing his
+dislikes.  He certainly glowered at me when I began hanging around
+the palace.  He went back in my history and circulated the blackest
+tales about me.  The worst of it was that most of them were true.
+He even made a voyage to Apia to find things out--as if he couldn't
+find a plenty right there on the beach of Manatomana!  And he
+sneered at my failing for religion, and at my going to prayer-
+meeting, and, most of all, at my sugar-planting.  He challenged me
+to fight, and I kept off of him.  He threatened me, and I learned
+in the nick of time of his plan to have me knocked on the head.
+You see, he wanted the Princess just as much as I did, and I wanted
+her more.
+
+"She used to play the piano.  So did I, once.  But I never let her
+know after I'd heard her play the first time.  And she thought her
+playing was wonderful, the dear, fond girl!  You know the sort, the
+mechanical one-two-three tum-tum-tum school-girl stuff.  And now
+I'll tell you something funnier.  Her playing WAS wonderful to me.
+The gates of heaven opened to me when she played.  I can see myself
+now, worn out and dog-tired after the long day, lying on the mats
+of the palace veranda and gazing upon her at the piano, myself in a
+perfect idiocy of bliss.  Why, this idea she had of her fine
+playing was the one flaw in her deliciousness of perfection, and I
+loved her for it.  It kind of brought her within my human reach.
+Why, when she played her one-two-three, tum-tum-tum, I was in the
+seventh heaven of bliss.  My weariness fell from me.  I loved her,
+and my love for her was clean as flame, clean as my love for God.
+And do you know, into my fond lover's fancy continually intruded
+the thought that God in most ways must look like her.
+
+"--That's right, Bruce Cadogan Cavendish, sneer as you like.  But I
+tell you that's love that I've been describing.  That's all.  It's
+love.  It's the realest, purest, finest thing that can happen to a
+man.  And I know what I'm talking about.  It happened to me."
+
+Whiskers, his beady squirrel's eye glittering from out his ruined
+eyebrow like a live coal in a jungle ambush, broke off long enough
+to down a sedative draught from his condensed milk can and to mix
+another.
+
+"The cane," he resumed, wiping his prodigious mat of face hair with
+the back of his hand.  "It matured in sixteen months in that
+climate, and I was ready, just ready and no more, with the mill for
+the grinding.  Naturally, it did not all mature at once, but I had
+planted in such succession that I could grind for nine months
+steadily, while more was being planted and the ratoons were
+springing up.
+
+"I had my troubles the first several days.  If it wasn't one thing
+the matter with the mill, it was another.  On the fourth day,
+Ferguson, my engineer, had to shut down several hours in order to
+remedy his own troubles.  I was bothered by the feeder.  After
+having the niggers (who had been feeding the cane) pour cream of
+lime on the rollers to keep everything sweet, I sent them out to
+join the cane-cutting squads.  So I was all alone at that end, just
+as Ferguson started up the mill, just as I discovered what was the
+matter with the feed-rollers, and just as Motomoe strolled up.
+
+"He stood there, in Norfolk jacket, pigskin puttees, and all the
+rest of the fashionable get-up out of a bandbox, sneering at me
+covered with filth and grease to the eyebrows and looking like a
+navvy.  And, the rollers now white from the lime, I'd just seen
+what was wrong.  The rollers were not in plumb.  One side crushed
+the cane well, but the other side was too open.  I shoved my
+fingers in on that side.  The big, toothed cogs on the rollers did
+not touch my fingers.  And yet, suddenly, they did.  With the grip
+of ten thousand devils, my finger-tips were caught, drawn in, and
+pulped to--well, just pulp.  And, like a slick of cane, I had
+started on my way.  There was no stopping me.  Ten thousand horses
+could not have pulled me back.  There was nothing to stop me.
+Hand, arm, shoulder, head, and chest, down to the toes of me, I was
+doomed to feed through.
+
+"It did hurt.  It hurt so much it did not hurt me at all.  Quite
+detached, almost may I say, I looked on my hand being ground up,
+knuckle by knuckle, joint by joint, the back of the hand, the
+wrist, the forearm, all in order slowly and inevitably feeding in.
+O engineer hoist by thine own petard!  O sugar-maker crushed by
+thine own cane-crusher!
+
+"Motomoe sprang forward involuntarily, and the sneer was chased
+from his face by an expression of solicitude.  Then the beauty of
+the situation dawned on him, and he chuckled and grinned.  No, I
+didn't expect anything of him.  Hadn't he tried to knock me on the
+head?  What could he do anyway?  He didn't know anything about
+engines.
+
+"I yelled at the top of my lungs to Ferguson to shut off the
+engine, but the roar of the machinery drowned my voice.  And there
+I stood, up to the elbow and feeding right on in.  Yes, it did
+hurt.  There were some astonishing twinges when special nerves were
+shredded and dragged out by the roots.  But I remember that I was
+surprised at the time that it did not hurt worse.
+
+"Motomoe made a movement that attracted my attention.  At the same
+time he growled out loud, as if he hated himself, 'I'm a fool.'
+What he had done was to pick up a cane-knife--you know the kind, as
+big as a machete and as heavy.  And I was grateful to him in
+advance for putting me out of my misery.  There wasn't any sense in
+slowly feeding in till my head was crushed, and already my arm was
+pulped half way from elbow to shoulder, and the pulping was going
+right on.  So I was grateful, as I bent my head to the blow.
+
+"'Get your head out of the way, you idiot!' he barked at me.
+
+"And then I understood and obeyed.  I was a big man, and he took
+two hacks to do it; but he hacked my arm off just outside the
+shoulder and dragged me back and laid me down on the cane.
+
+"Yes, the sugar paid--enormously; and I built for the Princess the
+church of her saintly dream, and . . . she married me."
+
+He partly assuaged his thirst, and uttered his final word.
+
+"Alackaday!  Shuttlecock and battle-dore.  And this at, the end of
+it all, lined with boilerplate that even alcohol will not corrode
+and that only alcohol will tickle.  Yet have I lived, and I kiss my
+hand to the dear dust of my Princess long asleep in the great
+mausoleum of King John that looks across the Vale of Manona to the
+alien flag that floats over the bungalow of the British Government
+House. . . "
+
+Fatty pledged him sympathetically, and sympathetically drank out of
+his own small can.  Bruce Cadogan Cavendish glared into the fire
+with implacable bitterness.  He was a man who preferred to drink by
+himself.  Across the thin lips that composed the cruel slash of his
+mouth played twitches of mockery that caught Fatty's eye.  And
+Fatty, making sure first that his rock-chunk was within reach,
+challenged.
+
+"Well, how about yourself, Bruce Cadogan Cavendish?  It's your
+turn."
+
+The other lifted bleak eyes that bored into Fatty's until he
+physically betrayed uncomfortableness.
+
+"I've lived a hard life," Slim grated harshly.  "What do I know
+about love passages?"
+
+"No man of your build and make-up could have escaped them," Fatty
+wheedled.
+
+"And what of it?" Slim snarled.  "It's no reason for a gentleman to
+boast of amorous triumphs."
+
+"Oh, go on, be a good fellow," Fatty urged.  "The night's still
+young.  We've still some drink left.  Delarouse and I have
+contributed our share.  It isn't often that three real ones like us
+get together for a telling.  Surely you've got at least one
+adventure in love you aren't ashamed to tell about--"
+
+Bruce Cadogan Cavendish pulled forth his iron quoit and seemed to
+debate whether or not he should brain the other.  He sighed, and
+put back the quoit.
+
+"Very well, if you will have it," he surrendered with manifest
+reluctance.  "Like you two, I have had a remarkable constitution.
+And right now, speaking of armour-plate lining, I could drink the
+both of you down when you were at your prime.  Like you two, my
+beginnings were far distant and different.  That I am marked with
+the hall-mark of gentlehood there is no discussion . . . unless
+either of you care to discuss the matter now . . . "
+
+His one hand slipped into his pocket and clutched the quoit.
+Neither of his auditors spoke nor betrayed any awareness of his
+menace.
+
+"It occurred a thousand miles to the westward of Manatomana, on the
+island of Tagalag," he continued abruptly, with an air of saturnine
+disappointment in that there had been no discussion.  "But first I
+must tell you of how I got to Tagalag.  For reasons I shall not
+mention, by paths of descent I shall not describe, in the crown of
+my manhood and the prime of my devilishness in which Oxford
+renegades and racing younger sons had nothing on me, I found myself
+master and owner of a schooner so well known that she shall remain
+historically nameless.  I was running blackbird labour from the
+west South Pacific and the Coral Sea to the plantations of Hawaii
+and the nitrate mines of Chili--"
+
+"It was you who cleaned out the entire population of--" Fatty
+exploded, ere he could check his speech.
+
+The one hand of Bruce Cadogan Cavendish flashed pocketward and
+flashed back with the quoit balanced ripe for business.
+
+"Proceed," Fatty sighed.  "I . . . I have quite forgotten what I
+was going to say."
+
+"Beastly funny country over that way," the narrator drawled with
+perfect casualness.  "You've read this Sea Wolf stuff--"
+
+"You weren't the Sea Wolf," Whiskers broke in with involuntary
+positiveness.
+
+"No, sir," was the snarling answer.  "The Sea Wolf's dead, isn't
+he?  And I'm still alive, aren't I?"
+
+"Of course, of course," Whiskers conceded.  "He suffocated head-
+first in the mud off a wharf in Victoria a couple of years back."
+
+"As I was saying--and I don't like interruptions," Bruce Cadogan
+Cavendish proceeded, "it's a beastly funny country over that way.
+I was at Taki-Tiki, a low island that politically belongs to the
+Solomons, but that geologically doesn't at all, for the Solomons
+are high islands.  Ethnographically it belongs to Polynesia,
+Melanesia, and Micronesia, because all the breeds of the South
+Pacific have gravitated to it by canoe-drift and intricately,
+degeneratively, and amazingly interbred.  The scum of the scrapings
+of the bottom of the human pit, biologically speaking, resides in
+Taka-Tiki.  And I know the bottom and whereof I speak.
+
+"It was a beastly funny time of it I had, diving out shell, fishing
+beche-de-mer, trading hoop-iron and hatchets for copra and ivory-
+nuts, running niggers and all the rest of it.  Why, even in Fiji
+the Lotu was having a hard time of it and the chiefs still eating
+long-pig.  To the westward it was fierce--funny little black kinky-
+heads, man-eaters the last Jack of them, and the jackpot fat and
+spilling over with wealth--"
+
+"Jack-pots?" Fatty queried.  At sight of an irritable movement, he
+added:  "You see, I never got over to the West like Delarouse and
+you."
+
+"They're all head-hunters.  Heads are valuable, especially a white
+man's head.  They decorate the canoe-houses and devil-devil houses
+with them.  Each village runs a jack-pot, and everybody antes.
+Whoever brings in a white man's head takes the pot.  If there
+aren't openers for a long time, the pot grows to tremendous
+proportions.  Beastly funny, isn't it?
+
+"I know.  Didn't a Holland mate die on me of blackwater?  And
+didn't I win a pot myself?  It was this way.  We were lying at
+Lango-lui at the time.  I never let on, and arranged the affair
+with Johnny, my boat-steerer.  He was a kinky-head himself from
+Port Moresby.  He cut the dead mate's head off and sneaked ashore
+in the might, while I whanged away with my rifle as if I were
+trying to get him.  He opened the pot with the mate's head, and got
+it, too.  Of course, next day I sent in a landing boat, with two
+covering boats, and fetched him off with the loot."
+
+"How big was the pot?" Whiskers asked.  "I heard of a pot at Orla
+worth eighty quid."
+
+"To commence with," Slim answered, "there were forty fat pigs, each
+worth a fathom of prime shell-money, and shell-money worth a quid a
+fathom.  That was two hundred dollars right there.  There were
+ninety-eight fathoms of shell-money, which is pretty close to five
+hundred in itself.  And there were twenty-two gold sovereigns.  I
+split it four ways:  one-fourth to Johnny, one-fourth to the ship,
+one-fourth to me as owner, and one-fourth to me as skipper.  Johnny
+never complained.  He'd never had so much wealth all at one time in
+his life.  Besides, I gave him a couple of the mate's old shirts.
+And I fancy the mate's head is still there decorating the canoe-
+house."
+
+"Not exactly Christian burial of a Christian," Whiskers observed.
+
+"But a lucrative burial," Slim retorted.  "I had to feed the rest
+of the mate over-side to the sharks for nothing.  Think of feeding
+an eight-hundred-dollar head along with it.  It would have been
+criminal waste and stark lunacy.
+
+"Well, anyway, it was all beastly funny, over there to the
+westward.  And, without telling you the scrape I got into at Taki-
+Tiki, except that I sailed away with two hundred kinky-heads for
+Queensland labour, and for my manner of collecting them had two
+British ships of war combing the Pacific for me, I changed my
+course and ran to the westward thinking to dispose of the lot to
+the Spanish plantations on Bangar.
+
+"Typhoon season.  We caught it.  The Merry Mist was my schooner's
+name, and I had thought she was stoutly built until she hit that
+typhoon.  I never saw such seas.  They pounded that stout craft to
+pieces, literally so.  The sticks were jerked out of her,
+deckhouses splintered to match-wood, rails ripped off, and, after
+the worst had passed, the covering boards began to go.  We just
+managed to repair what was left of one boat and keep the schooner
+afloat only till the sea went down barely enough to get away.  And
+we outfitted that boat in a hurry.  The carpenter and I were the
+last, and we had to jump for it as he went down.  There were only
+four of us--"
+
+"Lost all the niggers?" Whiskers inquired.
+
+"Some of them swam for some time," Slim replied.  "But I don't
+fancy they made the land.  We were ten days' in doing it.  And we
+had a spanking breeze most of the way.  And what do you think we
+had in the boat with us?  Cases of square-face gin and cases of
+dynamite.  Funny, wasn't it?  Well, it got funnier later on.  Oh,
+there was a small beaker of water, a little salt horse, and some
+salt-water-soaked sea biscuit--enough to keep us alive to Tagalag.
+
+"Now Tagalag is the disappointingest island I've ever beheld.  It
+shows up out of the sea so as you can make its fall twenty miles
+off.  It is a volcano cone thrust up out of deep sea, with a
+segment of the crater wall broken out.  This gives sea entrance to
+the crater itself, and makes a fine sheltered harbour.  And that's
+all.  Nothing lives there.  The outside and the inside of the
+crater are too steep.  At one place, inside, is a patch of about a
+thousand coconut palms.  And that's all, as I said, saving a few
+insects.  No four-legged thing, even a rat, inhabits the place.
+And it's funny, most awful funny, with all those coconuts, not even
+a coconut crab.  The only meat-food living was schools of mullet in
+the harbour--fattest, finest, biggest mullet I ever laid eyes on.
+
+"And the four of us landed on the little beach and set up
+housekeeping among the coconuts with a larder full of dynamite and
+square-face.  Why don't you laugh?  It's funny, I tell you.  Try it
+some time.--Holland gin and straight coconut diet.  I've never been
+able to look a confectioner's window in the face since.  Now I'm
+not strong on religion like Chauncey Delarouse there, but I have
+some primitive ideas; and my concept of hell is an illimitable
+coconut plantation, stocked with cases of square-face and populated
+by ship-wrecked mariners.  Funny?  It must make the devil scream.
+
+"You know, straight coconut is what the agriculturists call an
+unbalanced ration.  It certainly unbalanced our digestions.  We got
+so that whenever hunger took an extra bite at us, we took another
+drink of gin.  After a couple of weeks of it, Olaf, a squarehead
+sailor, got an idea.  It came when he was full of gin, and we,
+being in the same fix, just watched him shove a cap and short fuse
+into a stick of dynamite and stroll down toward the boat.
+
+"It dawned on me that he was going to shoot fish if there were any
+about; but the sun was beastly hot, and I just reclined there and
+hoped he'd have luck.
+
+"About half an hour after he disappeared we heard the explosion.
+But he didn't come back.  We waited till the cool of sunset, and
+down on the beach found what had become of him.  The boat was there
+all right, grounded by the prevailing breeze, but there was no
+Olaf.  He would never have to eat coconut again.  We went back,
+shakier than ever, and cracked another square-face.
+
+"The next day the cook announced that he would rather take his
+chance with dynamite than continue trying to exist on coconut, and
+that, though he didn't know anything about dynamite, he knew a
+sight too much about coconut.  So we bit the detonator down for
+him, shoved in a fuse, and picked him a good fire-stick, while he
+jolted up with a couple more stiff ones of gin.
+
+"It was the same programme as the day before.  After a while we
+heard the explosion and at twilight went down to the boat, from
+which we scraped enough of the cook for a funeral.
+
+"The carpenter and I stuck it out two days more, then we drew
+straws for it and it was his turn.  We parted with harsh words; for
+he wanted to take a square-face along to refresh himself by the
+way, while I was set against running any chance of wasting the gin.
+Besides, he had more than he could carry then, and he wobbled and
+staggered as he walked.
+
+"Same thing, only there was a whole lot of him left for me to bury,
+because he'd prepared only half a stick.  I managed to last it out
+till next day, when, after duly fortifying myself, I got sufficient
+courage to tackle the dynamite.  I used only a third of a stick--
+you know, short fuse, with the end split so as to hold the head of
+a safety match.  That's where I mended my predecessors' methods.
+Not using the match-head, they'd too-long fuses.  Therefore, when
+they spotted a school of mullet; and lighted the fuse, they had to
+hold the dynamite till the fuse burned short before they threw it.
+If they threw it too soon, it wouldn't go off the instant it hit
+the water, while the splash of it would frighten the mullet away.
+Funny stuff dynamite.  At any rate, I still maintain mine was the
+safer method.
+
+"I picked up a school of mullet before I'd been rowing five
+minutes.  Fine big fat ones they were, and I could smell them over
+the fire.  When I stood up, fire-stick in one hand, dynamite stick
+in the other, my knees were knocking together.  Maybe it was the
+gin, or the anxiousness, or the weakness and the hunger, and maybe
+it was the result of all of them, but at any rate I was all of a
+shake.  Twice I failed to touch the fire-stick to the dynamite.
+Then I did, heard the match-head splutter, and let her go.
+
+"Now I don't know what happened to the others, but I know what I
+did.  I got turned about.  Did you ever stem a strawberry and throw
+the strawberry away and pop the stem into your mouth?  That's what
+I did.  I threw the fire-stick into the water after the mullet and
+held on to the dynamite.  And my arm went off with the stick when
+it went off. . . . "
+
+Slim investigated the tomato-can for water to mix himself a drink,
+but found it empty.  He stood up.
+
+"Heigh ho," he yawned, and started down the path to the river.
+
+In several minutes he was back.  He mixed the due quantity of river
+slush with the alcohol, took a long, solitary drink, and stared
+with bitter moodiness into the fire.
+
+"Yes, but . . . " Fatty suggested.  "What happened then?"
+
+"Oh," sad Slim.  "Then the princess married me, of course."
+
+"But you were the only person left, and there wasn't any princess .
+. . "  Whiskers cried out abruptly, and then let his voice trail
+away to embarrassed silence.
+
+Slim stared unblinkingly into the fire.
+
+Percival Delaney and Chauncey Delarouse looked at each other.
+Quietly, in solemn silence, each with his one arm aided the one arm
+of the other in rolling and tying his bundle.  And in silence,
+bundles slung on shoulders, they went away out of the circle of
+firelight.  Not until they reached the top of the railroad
+embankment did they speak.
+
+"No gentleman would have done it," said Whiskers.
+
+"No gentleman would have done it," Fatty agreed.
+
+Glen Ellen, California,
+September 26, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE RED ONE ***
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+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>The Red One</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">The Red One, by Jack London</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red One, by Jack London
+(#6 in our series by Jack London)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Red One
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: January, 1997  [EBook #788]
+[This file was first posted on January 25, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: September 17, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1919 Mills and Boon edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h1>THE RED ONE</h1>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Contents:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The Red One<br />The Hussy<br />Like Argus of the Ancient Times<br />The
+Princess</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>STORY: THE RED ONE</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>There it was!&nbsp; The abrupt liberation of sound!&nbsp; As he timed
+it with his watch, Bassett likened it to the trump of an archangel.&nbsp;
+Walls of cities, he meditated, might well fall down before so vast and
+compelling a summons.&nbsp; For the thousandth time vainly he tried
+to analyse the tone-quality of that enormous peal that dominated the
+land far into the strong-holds of the surrounding tribes.&nbsp; The
+mountain gorge which was its source rang to the rising tide of it until
+it brimmed over and flooded earth and sky and air.&nbsp; With the wantonness
+of a sick man&rsquo;s fancy, he likened it to the mighty cry of some
+Titan of the Elder World vexed with misery or wrath.&nbsp; Higher and
+higher it arose, challenging and demanding in such profounds of volume
+that it seemed intended for ears beyond the narrow confines of the solar
+system.&nbsp; There was in it, too, the clamour of protest in that there
+were no ears to hear and comprehend its utterance.</p>
+<p>- Such the sick man&rsquo;s fancy.&nbsp; Still he strove to analyse
+the sound.&nbsp; Sonorous as thunder was it, mellow as a golden bell,
+thin and sweet as a thrummed taut cord of silver - no; it was none of
+these, nor a blend of these.&nbsp; There were no words nor semblances
+in his vocabulary and experience with which to describe the totality
+of that sound.</p>
+<p>Time passed.&nbsp; Minutes merged into quarters of hours, and quarters
+of hours into half-hours, and still the sound persisted, ever changing
+from its initial vocal impulse yet never receiving fresh impulse - fading,
+dimming, dying as enormously as it had sprung into being.&nbsp; It became
+a confusion of troubled mutterings and babblings and colossal whisperings.&nbsp;
+Slowly it withdrew, sob by sob, into whatever great bosom had birthed
+it, until it whimpered deadly whispers of wrath and as equally seductive
+whispers of delight, striving still to be heard, to convey some cosmic
+secret, some understanding of infinite import and value.&nbsp; It dwindled
+to a ghost of sound that had lost its menace and promise, and became
+a thing that pulsed on in the sick man&rsquo;s consciousness for minutes
+after it had ceased.&nbsp; When he could hear it no longer, Bassett
+glanced at his watch.&nbsp; An hour had elapsed ere that archangel&rsquo;s
+trump had subsided into tonal nothingness.</p>
+<p>Was this, then, <i>his</i> dark tower? - Bassett pondered, remembering
+his Browning and gazing at his skeleton-like and fever-wasted hands.&nbsp;
+And the fancy made him smile - of Childe Roland bearing a slug-horn
+to his lips with an arm as feeble as his was.&nbsp; Was it months, or
+years, he asked himself, since he first heard that mysterious call on
+the beach at Ringmanu?&nbsp; To save himself he could not tell.&nbsp;
+The long sickness had been most long.&nbsp; In conscious count of time
+he knew of months, many of them; but he had no way of estimating the
+long intervals of delirium and stupor.&nbsp; And how fared Captain Bateman
+of the blackbirder <i>Nari</i>? he wondered; and had Captain Bateman&rsquo;s
+drunken mate died of delirium tremens yet?</p>
+<p>From which vain speculations, Bassett turned idly to review all that
+had occurred since that day on the beach of Ringmanu when he first heard
+the sound and plunged into the jungle after it.&nbsp; Sagawa had protested.&nbsp;
+He could see him yet, his queer little monkeyish face eloquent with
+fear, his back burdened with specimen cases, in his hands Bassett&rsquo;s
+butterfly net and naturalist&rsquo;s shot-gun, as he quavered, in B&ecirc;che-de-mer
+English: &ldquo;Me fella too much fright along bush.&nbsp; Bad fella
+boy, too much stop&rsquo;m along bush.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Bassett smiled sadly at the recollection.&nbsp; The little New Hanover
+boy had been frightened, but had proved faithful, following him without
+hesitancy into the bush in the quest after the source of the wonderful
+sound.&nbsp; No fire-hollowed tree-trunk, that, throbbing war through
+the jungle depths, had been Bassett&rsquo;s conclusion.&nbsp; Erroneous
+had been his next conclusion, namely, that the source or cause could
+not be more distant than an hour&rsquo;s walk, and that he would easily
+be back by mid-afternoon to be picked up by the <i>Nari&rsquo;s</i>
+whale-boat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That big fella noise no good, all the same devil-devil,&rdquo;
+Sagawa had adjudged.&nbsp; And Sagawa had been right.&nbsp; Had he not
+had his head hacked off within the day?&nbsp; Bassett shuddered.&nbsp;
+Without doubt Sagawa had been eaten as well by the &ldquo;bad fella
+boys too much&rdquo; that stopped along the bush.&nbsp; He could see
+him, as he had last seen him, stripped of the shot-gun and all the naturalist&rsquo;s
+gear of his master, lying on the narrow trail where he had been decapitated
+barely the moment before.&nbsp; Yes, within a minute the thing had happened.&nbsp;
+Within a minute, looking back, Bassett had seen him trudging patiently
+along under his burdens.&nbsp; Then Bassett&rsquo;s own trouble had
+come upon him.&nbsp; He looked at the cruelly healed stumps of the first
+and second fingers of his left hand, then rubbed them softly into the
+indentation in the back of his skull.&nbsp; Quick as had been the flash
+of the long handled tomahawk, he had been quick enough to duck away
+his head and partially to deflect the stroke with his up-flung hand.&nbsp;
+Two fingers and a hasty scalp-wound had been the price he paid for his
+life.&nbsp; With one barrel of his ten-gauge shot-gun he had blown the
+life out of the bushman who had so nearly got him; with the other barrel
+he had peppered the bushmen bending over Sagawa, and had the pleasure
+of knowing that the major portion of the charge had gone into the one
+who leaped away with Sagawa&rsquo;s head.&nbsp; Everything had occurred
+in a flash.&nbsp; Only himself, the slain bushman, and what remained
+of Sagawa, were in the narrow, wild-pig run of a path.&nbsp; From the
+dark jungle on either side came no rustle of movement or sound of life.&nbsp;
+And he had suffered distinct and dreadful shock.&nbsp; For the first
+time in his life he had killed a human being, and he knew nausea as
+he contemplated the mess of his handiwork.</p>
+<p>Then had begun the chase.&nbsp; He retreated up the pig-run before
+his hunters, who were between him and the beach.&nbsp; How many there
+were, he could not guess.&nbsp; There might have been one, or a hundred,
+for aught he saw of them.&nbsp; That some of them took to the trees
+and travelled along through the jungle roof he was certain; but at the
+most he never glimpsed more than an occasional flitting of shadows.&nbsp;
+ No bow-strings twanged that he could hear; but every little while,
+whence discharged he knew not, tiny arrows whispered past him or struck
+tree-boles and fluttered to the ground beside him.&nbsp; They were bone-tipped
+and feather shafted, and the feathers, torn from the breasts of humming-birds,
+iridesced like jewels.</p>
+<p>Once - and now, after the long lapse of time, he chuckled gleefully
+at the recollection - he had detected a shadow above him that came to
+instant rest as he turned his gaze upward.&nbsp; He could make out nothing,
+but, deciding to chance it, had fired at it a heavy charge of number
+five shot.&nbsp; Squalling like an infuriated cat, the shadow crashed
+down through tree-ferns and orchids and thudded upon the earth at his
+feet, and, still squalling its rage and pain, had sunk its human teeth
+into the ankle of his stout tramping boot.&nbsp; He, on the other hand,
+was not idle, and with his free foot had done what reduced the squalling
+to silence.&nbsp; So inured to savagery has Bassett since become, that
+he chuckled again with the glee of the recollection.</p>
+<p>What a night had followed!&nbsp; Small wonder that he had accumulated
+such a virulence and variety of fevers, he thought, as he recalled that
+sleepless night of torment, when the throb of his wounds was as nothing
+compared with the myriad stings of the mosquitoes.&nbsp; There had been
+no escaping them, and he had not dared to light a fire.&nbsp; They had
+literally pumped his body full of poison, so that, with the coming of
+day, eyes swollen almost shut, he had stumbled blindly on, not caring
+much when his head should be hacked off and his carcass started on the
+way of Sagawa&rsquo;s to the cooking fire.&nbsp; Twenty-four hours had
+made a wreck of him - of mind as well as body.&nbsp; He had scarcely
+retained his wits at all, so maddened was he by the tremendous inoculation
+of poison he had received.&nbsp; Several times he fired his shot-gun
+with effect into the shadows that dogged him.&nbsp; Stinging day insects
+and gnats added to his torment, while his bloody wounds attracted hosts
+of loathsome flies that clung sluggishly to his flesh and had to be
+brushed off and crushed off.</p>
+<p>Once, in that day, he heard again the wonderful sound, seemingly
+more distant, but rising imperiously above the nearer war-drums in the
+bush.&nbsp; Right there was where he had made his mistake.&nbsp; Thinking
+that he had passed beyond it and that, therefore, it was between him
+and the beach of Ringmanu, he had worked back toward it when in reality
+he was penetrating deeper and deeper into the mysterious heart of the
+unexplored island.&nbsp; That night, crawling in among the twisted roots
+of a banyan tree, he had slept from exhaustion while the mosquitoes
+had had their will of him.</p>
+<p>Followed days and nights that were vague as nightmares in his memory.&nbsp;
+One clear vision he remembered was of suddenly finding himself in the
+midst of a bush village and watching the old men and children fleeing
+into the jungle.&nbsp; All had fled but one.&nbsp; From close at hand
+and above him, a whimpering as of some animal in pain and terror had
+startled him.&nbsp; And looking up he had seen her - a girl, or young
+woman rather, suspended by one arm in the cooking sun.&nbsp; Perhaps
+for days she had so hung.&nbsp; Her swollen, protruding tongue spoke
+as much.&nbsp; Still alive, she gazed at him with eyes of terror.&nbsp;
+Past help, he decided, as he noted the swellings of her legs which advertised
+that the joints had been crushed and the great bones broken.&nbsp; He
+resolved to shoot her, and there the vision terminated.&nbsp; He could
+not remember whether he had or not, any more than could he remember
+how he chanced to be in that village, or how he succeeded in getting
+away from it.</p>
+<p>Many pictures, unrelated, came and went in Bassett&rsquo;s mind as
+he reviewed that period of his terrible wanderings.&nbsp; He remembered
+invading another village of a dozen houses and driving all before him
+with his shot-gun save, for one old man, too feeble to flee, who spat
+at him and whined and snarled as he dug open a ground-oven and from
+amid the hot stones dragged forth a roasted pig that steamed its essence
+deliciously through its green-leaf wrappings.&nbsp; It was at this place
+that a wantonness of savagery had seized upon him.&nbsp; Having feasted,
+ready to depart with a hind-quarter of the pig in his hand, he deliberately
+fired the grass thatch of a house with his burning glass.</p>
+<p>But seared deepest of all in Bassett&rsquo;s brain, was the dank
+and noisome jungle.&nbsp; It actually stank with evil, and it was always
+twilight.&nbsp; Rarely did a shaft of sunlight penetrate its matted
+roof a hundred feet overhead.&nbsp; And beneath that roof was an aerial
+ooze of vegetation, a monstrous, parasitic dripping of decadent life-forms
+that rooted in death and lived on death.&nbsp; And through all this
+he drifted, ever pursued by the flitting shadows of the anthropophagi,
+themselves ghosts of evil that dared not face him in battle but that
+knew that, soon or late, they would feed on him.&nbsp; Bassett remembered
+that at the time, in lucid moments, he had likened himself to a wounded
+bull pursued by plains&rsquo; coyotes too cowardly to battle with him
+for the meat of him, yet certain of the inevitable end of him when they
+would be full gorged.&nbsp; As the bull&rsquo;s horns and stamping hoofs
+kept off the coyotes, so his shot-gun kept off these Solomon Islanders,
+these twilight shades of bushmen of the island of Guadalcanal.</p>
+<p>Came the day of the grass lands.&nbsp; Abruptly, as if cloven by
+the sword of God in the hand of God, the jungle terminated.&nbsp; The
+edge of it, perpendicular and as black as the infamy of it, was a hundred
+feet up and down.&nbsp; And, beginning at the edge of it, grew the grass
+- sweet, soft, tender, pasture grass that would have delighted the eyes
+and beasts of any husbandman and that extended, on and on, for leagues
+and leagues of velvet verdure, to the backbone of the great island,
+the towering mountain range flung up by some ancient earth-cataclysm,
+serrated and gullied but not yet erased by the erosive tropic rains.&nbsp;
+But the grass!&nbsp; He had crawled into it a dozen yards, buried his
+face in it, smelled it, and broken down in a fit of involuntary weeping.</p>
+<p>And, while he wept, the wonderful sound had pealed forth - if by
+<i>peal</i>, he had often thought since, an adequate description could
+be given of the enunciation of so vast a sound melting sweet.&nbsp;
+Sweet it was, as no sound ever heard.&nbsp; Vast it was, of so mighty
+a resonance that it might have proceeded from some brazen-throated monster.&nbsp;
+And yet it called to him across that leagues-wide savannah, and was
+like a benediction to his long-suffering, pain racked spirit.</p>
+<p>He remembered how he lay there in the grass, wet-cheeked but no longer
+sobbing, listening to the sound and wondering that he had been able
+to hear it on the beach of Ringmanu.&nbsp; Some freak of air pressures
+and air currents, he reflected, had made it possible for the sound to
+carry so far.&nbsp; Such conditions might not happen again in a thousand
+days or ten thousand days, but the one day it had happened had been
+the day he landed from the <i>Nari</i> for several hours&rsquo; collecting.&nbsp;
+Especially had he been in quest of the famed jungle butterfly, a foot
+across from wing-tip to wing-tip, as velvet-dusky of lack of colour
+as was the gloom of the roof, of such lofty arboreal habits that it
+resorted only to the jungle roof and could be brought down only by a
+dose of shot.&nbsp; It was for this purpose that Sagawa had carried
+the ten-gauge shot-gun.</p>
+<p>Two days and nights he had spent crawling across that belt of grass
+land.&nbsp; He had suffered much, but pursuit had ceased at the jungle-edge.&nbsp;
+And he would have died of thirst had not a heavy thunderstorm revived
+him on the second day.</p>
+<p>And then had come Balatta.&nbsp; In the first shade, where the savannah
+yielded to the dense mountain jungle, he had collapsed to die.&nbsp;
+At first she had squealed with delight at sight of his helplessness,
+and was for beating his brain out with a stout forest branch.&nbsp;
+Perhaps it was his very utter helplessness that had appealed to her,
+and perhaps it was her human curiosity that made her refrain.&nbsp;
+At any rate, she had refrained, for he opened his eyes again under the
+impending blow, and saw her studying him intently.&nbsp; What especially
+struck her about him were his blue eyes and white skin.&nbsp; Coolly
+she had squatted on her hams, spat on his arm, and with her finger-tips
+scrubbed away the dirt of days and nights of muck and jungle that sullied
+the pristine whiteness of his skin.</p>
+<p>And everything about her had struck him especially, although there
+was nothing conventional about her at all.&nbsp; He laughed weakly at
+the recollection, for she had been as innocent of garb as Eve before
+the fig-leaf adventure.&nbsp; Squat and lean at the same time, asymmetrically
+limbed, string-muscled as if with lengths of cordage, dirt-caked from
+infancy save for casual showers, she was as unbeautiful a prototype
+of woman as he, with a scientist&rsquo;s eye, had ever gazed upon.&nbsp;
+Her breasts advertised at the one time her maturity and youth; and,
+if by nothing else, her sex was advertised by the one article of finery
+with which she was adorned, namely a pig&rsquo;s tail, thrust though
+a hole in her left ear-lobe.&nbsp; So lately had the tail been severed,
+that its raw end still oozed blood that dried upon her shoulder like
+so much candle-droppings.&nbsp; And her face!&nbsp; A twisted and wizened
+complex of apish features, perforated by upturned, sky-open, Mongolian
+nostrils, by a mouth that sagged from a huge upper-lip and faded precipitately
+into a retreating chin, by peering querulous eyes that blinked as blink
+the eyes of denizens of monkey-cages.</p>
+<p>Not even the water she brought him in a forest-leaf, and the ancient
+and half-putrid chunk of roast pig, could redeem in the slightest the
+grotesque hideousness of her.&nbsp; When he had eaten weakly for a space,
+he closed his eyes in order not to see her, although again and again
+she poked them open to peer at the blue of them.&nbsp; Then had come
+the sound.&nbsp; Nearer, much nearer, he knew it to be; and he knew
+equally well, despite the weary way he had come, that it was still many
+hours distant.&nbsp; The effect of it on her had been startling.&nbsp;
+She cringed under it, with averted face, moaning and chattering with
+fear.&nbsp; But after it had lived its full life of an hour, he closed
+his eyes and fell asleep with Balatta brushing the flies from him.</p>
+<p>When he awoke it was night, and she was gone.&nbsp; But he was aware
+of renewed strength, and, by then too thoroughly inoculated by the mosquito
+poison to suffer further inflammation, he closed his eyes and slept
+an unbroken stretch till sun-up.&nbsp; A little later Balatta had returned,
+bringing with her a half-dozen women who, unbeautiful as they were,
+were patently not so unbeautiful as she.&nbsp; She evidenced by her
+conduct that she considered him her find, her property, and the pride
+she took in showing him off would have been ludicrous had his situation
+not been so desperate.</p>
+<p>Later, after what had been to him a terrible journey of miles, when
+he collapsed in front of the devil-devil house in the shadow of the
+breadfruit tree, she had shown very lively ideas on the matter of retaining
+possession of him.&nbsp; Ngurn, whom Bassett was to know afterward as
+the devil-devil doctor, priest, or medicine man of the village, had
+wanted his head.&nbsp; Others of the grinning and chattering monkey-men,
+all as stark of clothes and bestial of appearance as Balatta, had wanted
+his body for the roasting oven.&nbsp; At that time he had not understood
+their language, if by <i>language</i> might be dignified the uncouth
+sounds they made to represent ideas.&nbsp; But Bassett had thoroughly
+understood the matter of debate, especially when the men pressed and
+prodded and felt of the flesh of him as if he were so much commodity
+in a butcher&rsquo;s stall.</p>
+<p>Balatta had been losing the debate rapidly, when the accident happened.&nbsp;
+One of the men, curiously examining Bassett&rsquo;s shot-gun, managed
+to cock and pull a trigger.&nbsp; The recoil of the butt into the pit
+of the man&rsquo;s stomach had not been the most sanguinary result,
+for the charge of shot, at a distance of a yard, had blown the head
+of one of the debaters into nothingness.</p>
+<p>Even Balatta joined the others in flight, and, ere they returned,
+his senses already reeling from the oncoming fever-attack, Bassett had
+regained possession of the gun.&nbsp; Whereupon, although his teeth
+chattered with the ague and his swimming eyes could scarcely see, he
+held on to his fading consciousness until he could intimidate the bushmen
+with the simple magics of compass, watch, burning glass, and matches.&nbsp;
+At the last, with due emphasis, of solemnity and awfulness, he had killed
+a young pig with his shot-gun and promptly fainted.</p>
+<p>Bassett flexed his arm-muscles in quest of what possible strength
+might reside in such weakness, and dragged himself slowly and totteringly
+to his feet.&nbsp; He was shockingly emaciated; yet, during the various
+convalescences of the many months of his long sickness, he had never
+regained quite the same degree of strength as this time.&nbsp; What
+he feared was another relapse such as he had already frequently experienced.&nbsp;
+Without drugs, without even quinine, he had managed so far to live through
+a combination of the most pernicious and most malignant of malarial
+and black-water fevers.&nbsp; But could he continue to endure?&nbsp;
+Such was his everlasting query.&nbsp; For, like the genuine scientist
+he was, he would not be content to die until he had solved the secret
+of the sound.</p>
+<p>Supported by a staff, he staggered the few steps to the devil-devil
+house where death and Ngurn reigned in gloom.&nbsp; Almost as infamously
+dark and evil-stinking as the jungle was the devil-devil house - in
+Bassett&rsquo;s opinion.&nbsp; Yet therein was usually to be found his
+favourite crony and gossip, Ngurn, always willing for a yarn or a discussion,
+the while he sat in the ashes of death and in a slow smoke shrewdly
+revolved curing human heads suspended from the rafters.&nbsp; For, through
+the months&rsquo; interval of consciousness of his long sickness, Bassett
+had mastered the psychological simplicities and lingual difficulties
+of the language of the tribe of Ngurn and Balatta and Vngngn - the latter
+the addle-headed young chief who was ruled by Ngurn, and who, whispered
+intrigue had it, was the son of Ngurn.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will the Red One speak to-day?&rdquo; Bassett asked, by this
+time so accustomed to the old man&rsquo;s gruesome occupation as to
+take even an interest in the progress of the smoke-curing.</p>
+<p>With the eye of an expert Ngurn examined the particular head he was
+at work upon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It will be ten days before I can say &lsquo;finish,&rsquo;&rdquo;
+he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Never has any man fixed heads like these.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Bassett smiled inwardly at the old fellow&rsquo;s reluctance to talk
+with him of the Red One.&nbsp; It had always been so.&nbsp; Never, by
+any chance, had Ngurn or any other member of the weird tribe divulged
+the slightest hint of any physical characteristic of the Red One.&nbsp;
+Physical the Red One must be, to emit the wonderful sound, and though
+it was called the Red One, Bassett could not be sure that red represented
+the colour of it.&nbsp; Red enough were the deeds and powers of it,
+from what abstract clues he had gleaned.&nbsp; Not alone, had Ngurn
+informed him, was the Red One more bestial powerful than the neighbour
+tribal gods, ever athirst for the red blood of living human sacrifices,
+but the neighbour gods themselves were sacrificed and tormented before
+him.&nbsp; He was the god of a dozen allied villages similar to this
+one, which was the central and commanding village of the federation.&nbsp;
+By virtue of the Red One many alien villages had been devastated and
+even wiped out, the prisoners sacrificed to the Red One.&nbsp; This
+was true to-day, and it extended back into old history carried down
+by word of mouth through the generations.&nbsp; When he, Ngurn, had
+been a young man, the tribes beyond the grass lands had made a war raid.&nbsp;
+In the counter raid, Ngurn and his fighting folk had made many prisoners.&nbsp;
+Of children alone over five score living had been bled white before
+the Red One, and many, many more men and women.</p>
+<p>The Thunderer was another of Ngurn&rsquo;s names for the mysterious
+deity.&nbsp; Also at times was he called The Loud Shouter, The God-Voiced,
+The Bird-Throated, The One with the Throat Sweet as the Throat of the
+Honey-Bird, The Sun Singer, and The Star-Born.</p>
+<p>Why The Star-Born?&nbsp; In vain Bassett interrogated Ngurn.&nbsp;
+According to that old devil-devil doctor, the Red One had always been,
+just where he was at present, for ever singing and thundering his will
+over men.&nbsp; But Ngurn&rsquo;s father, wrapped in decaying grass-matting
+and hanging even then over their heads among the smoky rafters of the
+devil-devil house, had held otherwise.&nbsp; That departed wise one
+had believed that the Red One came from out of the starry night, else
+why - so his argument had run - had the old and forgotten ones passed
+his name down as the Star-Born?&nbsp; Bassett could not but recognize
+something cogent in such argument.&nbsp; But Ngurn affirmed the long
+years of his long life, wherein he had gazed upon many starry nights,
+yet never had he found a star on grass land or in jungle depth - and
+he had looked for them.&nbsp; True, he had beheld shooting stars (this
+in reply to Bassett&rsquo;s contention); but likewise had he beheld
+the phosphorescence of fungoid growths and rotten meat and fireflies
+on dark nights, and the flames of wood-fires and of blazing candle-nuts;
+yet what were flame and blaze and glow when they had flamed and blazed
+and glowed?&nbsp; Answer: memories, memories only, of things which had
+ceased to be, like memories of matings accomplished, of feasts forgotten,
+of desires that were the ghosts of desires, flaring, flaming, burning,
+yet unrealized in achievement of easement and satisfaction.&nbsp; Where
+was the appetite of yesterday? the roasted flesh of the wild pig the
+hunter&rsquo;s arrow failed to slay? the maid, unwed and dead ere the
+young man knew her?</p>
+<p>A memory was not a star, was Ngurn&rsquo;s contention.&nbsp; How
+could a memory be a star?&nbsp; Further, after all his long life he
+still observed the starry night-sky unaltered.&nbsp; Never had he noted
+the absence of a single star from its accustomed place.&nbsp; Besides,
+stars were fire, and the Red One was not fire - which last involuntary
+betrayal told Bassett nothing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will the Red One speak to-morrow?&rdquo; he queried.</p>
+<p>Ngurn shrugged his shoulders as who should say.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And the day after? - and the day after that?&rdquo; Bassett
+persisted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would like to have the curing of your head,&rdquo; Ngurn
+changed the subject.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is different from any other head.&nbsp;
+No devil-devil has a head like it.&nbsp; Besides, I would cure it well.&nbsp;
+I would take months and months.&nbsp; The moons would come and the moons
+would go, and the smoke would be very slow, and I should myself gather
+the materials for the curing smoke.&nbsp; The skin would not wrinkle.&nbsp;
+It would be as smooth as your skin now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He stood up, and from the dim rafters, grimed with the smoking of
+countless heads, where day was no more than a gloom, took down a matting-wrapped
+parcel and began to open it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is a head like yours,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but it is
+poorly cured.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Bassett had pricked up his ears at the suggestion that it was a white
+man&rsquo;s head; for he had long since come to accept that these jungle-dwellers,
+in the midmost centre of the great island, had never had intercourse
+with white men.&nbsp; Certainly he had found them without the almost
+universal b&ecirc;che-de-mer English of the west South Pacific.&nbsp;
+Nor had they knowledge of tobacco, nor of gunpowder.&nbsp; Their few
+precious knives, made from lengths of hoop-iron, and their few and more
+precious tomahawks from cheap trade hatchets, he had surmised they had
+captured in war from the bushmen of the jungle beyond the grass lands,
+and that they, in turn, had similarly gained them from the salt-water
+men who fringed the coral beaches of the shore and had contact with
+the occasional white men.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The folk in the out beyond do not know how to cure heads,&rdquo;
+old Ngurn explained, as he drew forth from the filthy matting and placed
+in Bassett&rsquo;s hands an indubitable white man&rsquo;s head.</p>
+<p>Ancient it was beyond question; white it was as the blond hair attested.&nbsp;
+He could have sworn it once belonged to an Englishman, and to an Englishman
+of long before by token of the heavy gold circlets still threaded in
+the withered ear-lobes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now your head . . . &rdquo; the devil-devil doctor began on
+his favourite topic.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what,&rdquo; Bassett interrupted, struck
+by a new idea.&nbsp; &ldquo;When I die I&rsquo;ll let you have my head
+to cure, if, first, you take me to look upon the Red One.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will have your head anyway when you are dead,&rdquo; Ngurn
+rejected the proposition.&nbsp; He added, with the brutal frankness
+of the savage: &ldquo;Besides, you have not long to live.&nbsp; You
+are almost a dead man now.&nbsp; You will grow less strong.&nbsp; In
+not many months I shall have you here turning and turning in the smoke.&nbsp;
+It is pleasant, through the long afternoons, to turn the head of one
+you have known as well as I know you.&nbsp; And I shall talk to you
+and tell you the many secrets you want to know.&nbsp; Which will not
+matter, for you will be dead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ngurn,&rdquo; Bassett threatened in sudden anger.&nbsp; &ldquo;You
+know the Baby Thunder in the Iron that is mine.&rdquo;&nbsp; (This was
+in reference to his all-potent and all-awful shotgun.)&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+can kill you any time, and then you will not get my head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just the same, will Vngngn, or some one else of my folk get
+it,&rdquo; Ngurn complacently assured him.&nbsp; &ldquo;And just the
+same will it turn here in the and turn devil-devil house in the smoke.&nbsp;
+The quicker you slay me with your Baby Thunder, the quicker will your
+head turn in the smoke.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And Bassett knew he was beaten in the discussion.</p>
+<p>What was the Red One? - Bassett asked himself a thousand times in
+the succeeding week, while he seemed to grow stronger.&nbsp; What was
+the source of the wonderful sound?&nbsp; What was this Sun Singer, this
+Star-Born One, this mysterious deity, as bestial-conducted as the black
+and kinky-headed and monkey-like human beasts who worshipped it, and
+whose silver-sweet, bull-mouthed singing and commanding he had heard
+at the taboo distance for so long?</p>
+<p>Ngurn had he failed to bribe with the inevitable curing of his head
+when he was dead.&nbsp; Vngngn, imbecile and chief that he was, was
+too imbecilic, too much under the sway of Ngurn, to be considered.&nbsp;
+Remained Balatta, who, from the time she found him and poked his blue
+eyes open to recrudescence of her grotesque female hideousness, had
+continued his adorer.&nbsp; Woman she was, and he had long known that
+the only way to win from her treason of her tribe was through the woman&rsquo;s
+heart of her.</p>
+<p>Bassett was a fastidious man.&nbsp; He had never recovered from the
+initial horror caused by Balatta&rsquo;s female awfulness.&nbsp; Back
+in England, even at best the charm of woman, to him, had never been
+robust.&nbsp; Yet now, resolutely, as only a man can do who is capable
+of martyring himself for the cause of science, he proceeded to violate
+all the fineness and delicacy of his nature by making love to the unthinkably
+disgusting bushwoman.</p>
+<p>He shuddered, but with averted face hid his grimaces and swallowed
+his gorge as he put his arm around her dirt-crusted shoulders and felt
+the contact of her rancidoily and kinky hair with his neck and chin.&nbsp;
+But he nearly screamed when she succumbed to that caress so at the very
+first of the courtship and mowed and gibbered and squealed little, queer,
+pig-like gurgly noises of delight.&nbsp; It was too much.&nbsp; And
+the next he did in the singular courtship was to take her down to the
+stream and give her a vigorous scrubbing.</p>
+<p>From then on he devoted himself to her like a true swain as frequently
+and for as long at a time as his will could override his repugnance.&nbsp;
+But marriage, which she ardently suggested, with due observance of tribal
+custom, he balked at.&nbsp; Fortunately, taboo rule was strong in the
+tribe.&nbsp; Thus, Ngurn could never touch bone, or flesh, or hide of
+crocodile.&nbsp; This had been ordained at his birth.&nbsp; Vngngn was
+denied ever the touch of woman.&nbsp; Such pollution, did it chance
+to occur, could be purged only by the death of the offending female.&nbsp;
+It had happened once, since Bassett&rsquo;s arrival, when a girl of
+nine, running in play, stumbled and fell against the sacred chief.&nbsp;
+And the girl-child was seen no more.&nbsp; In whispers, Balatta told
+Bassett that she had been three days and nights in dying before the
+Red One.&nbsp; As for Balatta, the breadfruit was taboo to her.&nbsp;
+For which Bassett was thankful.&nbsp; The taboo might have been water.</p>
+<p>For himself, he fabricated a special taboo.&nbsp; Only could he marry,
+he explained, when the Southern Cross rode highest in the sky.&nbsp;
+Knowing his astronomy, he thus gained a reprieve of nearly nine months;
+and he was confident that within that time he would either be dead or
+escaped to the coast with full knowledge of the Red One and of the source
+of the Red One&rsquo;s wonderful voice.&nbsp; At first he had fancied
+the Red One to be some colossal statue, like Memnon, rendered vocal
+under certain temperature conditions of sunlight.&nbsp; But when, after
+a war raid, a batch of prisoners was brought in and the sacrifice made
+at night, in the midst of rain, when the sun could play no part, the
+Red One had been more vocal than usual, Bassett discarded that hypothesis.</p>
+<p>In company with Balatta, sometimes with men and parties of women,
+the freedom of the jungle was his for three quadrants of the compass.&nbsp;
+But the fourth quadrant, which contained the Red One&rsquo;s abiding
+place, was taboo.&nbsp; He made more thorough love to Balatta - also
+saw to it that she scrubbed herself more frequently.&nbsp; Eternal female
+she was, capable of any treason for the sake of love.&nbsp; And, though
+the sight of her was provocative of nausea and the contact of her provocative
+of despair, although he could not escape her awfulness in his dream-haunted
+nightmares of her, he nevertheless was aware of the cosmic verity of
+sex that animated her and that made her own life of less value than
+the happiness of her lover with whom she hoped to mate.&nbsp; Juliet
+or Balatta?&nbsp; Where was the intrinsic difference?&nbsp; The soft
+and tender product of ultra-civilization, or her bestial prototype of
+a hundred thousand years before her? - there was no difference.</p>
+<p>Bassett was a scientist first, a humanist afterward.&nbsp; In the
+jungle-heart of Guadalcanal he put the affair to the test, as in the
+laboratory he would have put to the test any chemical reaction.&nbsp;
+He increased his feigned ardour for the bushwoman, at the same time
+increasing the imperiousness of his will of desire over her to be led
+to look upon the Red One face to face.&nbsp; It was the old story, he
+recognized, that the woman must pay, and it occurred when the two of
+them, one day, were catching the unclassified and unnamed little black
+fish, an inch long, half-eel and half-scaled, rotund with salmon-golden
+roe, that frequented the fresh water, and that were esteemed, raw and
+whole, fresh or putrid, a perfect delicacy.&nbsp; Prone in the muck
+of the decaying jungle-floor, Balatta threw herself, clutching his ankles
+with her hands kissing his feet and making slubbery noises that chilled
+his backbone up and down again.&nbsp; She begged him to kill her rather
+than exact this ultimate love-payment.&nbsp; She told him of the penalty
+of breaking the taboo of the Red One - a week of torture, living, the
+details of which she yammered out from her face in the mire until he
+realized that he was yet a tyro in knowledge of the frightfulness the
+human was capable of wreaking on the human.</p>
+<p>Yet did Bassett insist on having his man&rsquo;s will satisfied,
+at the woman&rsquo;s risk, that he might solve the mystery of the Red
+One&rsquo;s singing, though she should die long and horribly and screaming.&nbsp;
+And Balatta, being mere woman, yielded.&nbsp; She led him into the forbidden
+quadrant.&nbsp; An abrupt mountain, shouldering in from the north to
+meet a similar intrusion from the south, tormented the stream in which
+they had fished into a deep and gloomy gorge.&nbsp; After a mile along
+the gorge, the way plunged sharply upward until they crossed a saddle
+of raw limestone which attracted his geologist&rsquo;s eye.&nbsp; Still
+climbing, although he paused often from sheer physical weakness, they
+scaled forest-clad heights until they emerged on a naked mesa or tableland.&nbsp;
+Bassett recognized the stuff of its composition as black volcanic sand,
+and knew that a pocket magnet could have captured a full load of the
+sharply angular grains he trod upon.</p>
+<p>And then holding Balatta by the hand and leading her onward, he came
+to it - a tremendous pit, obviously artificial, in the heart of the
+plateau.&nbsp; Old history, the South Seas Sailing Directions, scores
+of remembered data and connotations swift and furious, surged through
+his brain.&nbsp; It was Mendana who had discovered the islands and named
+them Solomon&rsquo;s, believing that he had found that monarch&rsquo;s
+fabled mines.&nbsp; They had laughed at the old navigator&rsquo;s child-like
+credulity; and yet here stood himself, Bassett, on the rim of an excavation
+for all the world like the diamond pits of South Africa.</p>
+<p>But no diamond this that he gazed down upon.&nbsp; Rather was it
+a pearl, with the depth of iridescence of a pearl; but of a size all
+pearls of earth and time, welded into one, could not have totalled;
+and of a colour undreamed of in any pearl, or of anything else, for
+that matter, for it was the colour of the Red One.&nbsp; And the Red
+One himself Bassett knew it to be on the instant.&nbsp; A perfect sphere,
+full two hundred feet in diameter, the top of it was a hundred feet
+below the level of the rim.&nbsp; He likened the colour quality of it
+to lacquer.&nbsp; Indeed, he took it to be some sort of lacquer, applied
+by man, but a lacquer too marvellously clever to have been manufactured
+by the bush-folk.&nbsp; Brighter than bright cherry-red, its richness
+of colour was as if it were red builded upon red.&nbsp; It glowed and
+iridesced in the sunlight as if gleaming up from underlay under underlay
+of red.</p>
+<p>In vain Balatta strove to dissuade him from descending.&nbsp; She
+threw herself in the dirt; but, when he continued down the trail that
+spiralled the pit-wall, she followed, cringing and whimpering her terror.&nbsp;
+That the red sphere had been dug out as a precious thing, was patent.&nbsp;
+Considering the paucity of members of the federated twelve villages
+and their primitive tools and methods, Bassett knew that the toil of
+a myriad generations could scarcely have made that enormous excavation.</p>
+<p>He found the pit bottom carpeted with human bones, among which, battered
+and defaced, lay village gods of wood and stone.&nbsp; Some, covered
+with obscene totemic figures and designs, were carved from solid tree
+trunks forty or fifty feet in length.&nbsp; He noted the absence of
+the shark and turtle gods, so common among the shore villages, and was
+amazed at the constant recurrence of the helmet motive.&nbsp; What did
+these jungle savages of the dark heart of Guadalcanal know of helmets?&nbsp;
+Had Mendana&rsquo;s men-at-arms worn helmets and penetrated here centuries
+before?&nbsp; And if not, then whence had the bush-folk caught the motive?</p>
+<p>Advancing over the litter of gods and bones, Balatta whimpering at
+his heels, Bassett entered the shadow of the Red One and passed on under
+its gigantic overhang until he touched it with his finger-tips.&nbsp;
+No lacquer that.&nbsp; Nor was the surface smooth as it should have
+been in the case of lacquer.&nbsp; On the contrary, it was corrugated
+and pitted, with here and there patches that showed signs of heat and
+fusing.&nbsp; Also, the substance of it was metal, though unlike any
+metal, or combination of metals, he had ever known.&nbsp; As for the
+colour itself, he decided it to be no application.&nbsp; It was the
+intrinsic colour of the metal itself.</p>
+<p>He moved his finger-tips, which up to that had merely rested, along
+the surface, and felt the whole gigantic sphere quicken and live and
+respond.&nbsp; It was incredible!&nbsp; So light a touch on so vast
+a mass!&nbsp; Yet did it quiver under the finger-tip caress in rhythmic
+vibrations that became whisperings and rustlings and mutterings of sound
+- but of sound so different; so elusively thin that it was shimmeringly
+sibilant; so mellow that it was maddening sweet, piping like an elfin
+horn, which last was just what Bassett decided would be like a peal
+from some bell of the gods reaching earthward from across space.</p>
+<p>He looked at Balatta with swift questioning; but the voice of the
+Red One he had evoked had flung her face downward and moaning among
+the bones.&nbsp; He returned to contemplation of the prodigy.&nbsp;
+Hollow it was, and of no metal known on earth, was his conclusion.&nbsp;
+It was right-named by the ones of old-time as the Star-Born.&nbsp; Only
+from the stars could it have come, and no thing of chance was it.&nbsp;
+It was a creation of artifice and mind.&nbsp; Such perfection of form,
+such hollowness that it certainly possessed, could not be the result
+of mere fortuitousness.&nbsp; A child of intelligences, remote and unguessable,
+working corporally in metals, it indubitably was.&nbsp; He stared at
+it in amaze, his brain a racing wild-fire of hypotheses to account for
+this far-journeyer who had adventured the night of space, threaded the
+stars, and now rose before him and above him, exhumed by patient anthropophagi,
+pitted and lacquered by its fiery bath in two atmospheres.</p>
+<p>But was the colour a lacquer of heat upon some familiar metal?&nbsp;
+Or was it an intrinsic quality of the metal itself?&nbsp; He thrust
+in the blue-point of his pocket-knife to test the constitution of the
+stuff.&nbsp; Instantly the entire sphere burst into a mighty whispering,
+sharp with protest, almost twanging goldenly, if a whisper could possibly
+be considered to twang, rising higher, sinking deeper, the two extremes
+of the registry of sound threatening to complete the circle and coalesce
+into the bull-mouthed thundering he had so often heard beyond the taboo
+distance.</p>
+<p>Forgetful of safety, of his own life itself, entranced by the wonder
+of the unthinkable and unguessable thing, he raised his knife to strike
+heavily from a long stroke, but was prevented by Balatta.&nbsp; She
+upreared on her own knees in an agony of terror, clasping his knees
+and supplicating him to desist.&nbsp; In the intensity of her desire
+to impress him, she put her forearm between her teeth and sank them
+to the bone.</p>
+<p>He scarcely observed her act, although he yielded automatically to
+his gentler instincts and withheld the knife-hack.&nbsp; To him, human
+life had dwarfed to microscopic proportions before this colossal portent
+of higher life from within the distances of the sidereal universe.&nbsp;
+As had she been a dog, he kicked the ugly little bushwoman to her feet
+and compelled her to start with him on an encirclement of the base.&nbsp;
+Part way around, he encountered horrors.&nbsp; Even, among the others,
+did he recognize the sun-shrivelled remnant of the nine-years girl who
+had accidentally broken Chief Vngngn&rsquo;s personality taboo.&nbsp;
+And, among what was left of these that had passed, he encountered what
+was left of one who had not yet passed.&nbsp; Truly had the bush-folk
+named themselves into the name of the Red One, seeing in him their own
+image which they strove to placate and please with such red offerings.</p>
+<p>Farther around, always treading the bones and images of humans and
+gods that constituted the floor of this ancient charnel-house of sacrifice,
+he came upon the device by which the Red One was made to send his call
+singing thunderingly across the jungle-belts and grass-lands to the
+far beach of Ringmanu.&nbsp; Simple and primitive was it as was the
+Red One&rsquo;s consummate artifice.&nbsp; A great king-post, half a
+hundred feet in length, seasoned by centuries of superstitious care,
+carven into dynasties of gods, each superimposed, each helmeted, each
+seated in the open mouth of a crocodile, was slung by ropes, twisted
+of climbing vegetable parasites, from the apex of a tripod of three
+great forest trunks, themselves carved into grinning and grotesque adumbrations
+of man&rsquo;s modern concepts of art and god.&nbsp; From the striker
+king-post, were suspended ropes of climbers to which men could apply
+their strength and direction.&nbsp; Like a battering ram, this king-post
+could be driven end-onward against the mighty red-iridescent sphere.</p>
+<p>Here was where Ngurn officiated and functioned religiously for himself
+and the twelve tribes under him.&nbsp; Bassett laughed aloud, almost
+with madness, at the thought of this wonderful messenger, winged with
+intelligence across space, to fall into a bushman stronghold and be
+worshipped by ape-like, man-eating and head-hunting savages.&nbsp; It
+was as if God&rsquo;s World had fallen into the muck mire of the abyss
+underlying the bottom of hell; as if Jehovah&rsquo;s Commandments had
+been presented on carved stone to the monkeys of the monkey cage at
+the Zoo; as if the Sermon on the Mount had been preached in a roaring
+bedlam of lunatics.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The slow weeks passed.&nbsp; The nights, by election, Bassett spent
+on the ashen floor of the devil-devil house, beneath the ever-swinging,
+slow-curing heads.&nbsp; His reason for this was that it was taboo to
+the lesser sex of woman, and therefore, a refuge for him from Balatta,
+who grew more persecutingly and perilously loverly as the Southern Cross
+rode higher in the sky and marked the imminence of her nuptials.&nbsp;
+His days Bassett spent in a hammock swung under the shade of the great
+breadfruit tree before the devil-devil house.&nbsp; There were breaks
+in this programme, when, in the comas of his devastating fever-attacks,
+he lay for days and nights in the house of heads.&nbsp; Ever he struggled
+to combat the fever, to live, to continue to live, to grow strong and
+stronger against the day when he would be strong enough to dare the
+grass-lands and the belted jungle beyond, and win to the beach, and
+to some labour-recruiting, black-birding ketch or schooner, and on to
+civilization and the men of civilization, to whom he could give news
+of the message from other worlds that lay, darkly worshipped by beastmen,
+in the black heart of Guadalcanal&rsquo;s midmost centre.</p>
+<p>On the other nights, lying late under the breadfruit tree, Bassett
+spent long hours watching the slow setting of the western stars beyond
+the black wall of jungle where it had been thrust back by the clearing
+for the village.&nbsp; Possessed of more than a cursory knowledge of
+astronomy, he took a sick man&rsquo;s pleasure in speculating as to
+the dwellers on the unseen worlds of those incredibly remote suns, to
+haunt whose houses of light, life came forth, a shy visitant, from the
+rayless crypts of matter.&nbsp; He could no more apprehend limits to
+time than bounds to space.&nbsp; No subversive radium speculations had
+shaken his steady scientific faith in the conservation of energy and
+the indestructibility of matter.&nbsp; Always and forever must there
+have been stars.&nbsp; And surely, in that cosmic ferment, all must
+be comparatively alike, comparatively of the same substance, or substances,
+save for the freaks of the ferment.&nbsp; All must obey, or compose,
+the same laws that ran without infraction through the entire experience
+of man.&nbsp; Therefore, he argued and agreed, must worlds and life
+be appanages to all the suns as they were appanages to the particular
+of his own solar system.</p>
+<p>Even as he lay here, under the breadfruit tree, an intelligence that
+stared across the starry gulfs, so must all the universe be exposed
+to the ceaseless scrutiny of innumerable eyes, like his, though grantedly
+different, with behind them, by the same token, intelligences that questioned
+and sought the meaning and the construction of the whole.&nbsp; So reasoning,
+he felt his soul go forth in kinship with that august company, that
+multitude whose gaze was forever upon the arras of infinity.</p>
+<p>Who were they, what were they, those far distant and superior ones
+who had bridged the sky with their gigantic, red-iridescent, heaven-singing
+message?&nbsp; Surely, and long since, had they, too, trod the path
+on which man had so recently, by the calendar of the cosmos, set his
+feet.&nbsp; And to be able to send a message across the pit of space,
+surely they had reached those heights to which man, in tears and travail
+and bloody sweat, in darkness and confusion of many counsels, was so
+slowly struggling.&nbsp; And what were they on their heights?&nbsp;
+Had they won Brotherhood?&nbsp; Or had they learned that the law of
+love imposed the penalty of weakness and decay?&nbsp; Was strife, life?&nbsp;
+Was the rule of all the universe the pitiless rule of natural selection?&nbsp;
+And, and most immediately and poignantly, were their far conclusions,
+their long-won wisdoms, shut even then in the huge, metallic heart of
+the Red One, waiting for the first earth-man to read?&nbsp; Of one thing
+he was certain: No drop of red dew shaken from the lion-mane of some
+sun in torment, was the sounding sphere.&nbsp; It was of design, not
+chance, and it contained the speech and wisdom of the stars.</p>
+<p>What engines and elements and mastered forces, what lore and mysteries
+and destiny-controls, might be there!&nbsp; Undoubtedly, since so much
+could be enclosed in so little a thing as the foundation stone of a
+public building, this enormous sphere should contain vast histories,
+profounds of research achieved beyond man&rsquo;s wildest guesses, laws
+and formulae that, easily mastered, would make man&rsquo;s life on earth,
+individual and collective, spring up from its present mire to inconceivable
+heights of purity and power.&nbsp; It was Time&rsquo;s greatest gift
+to blindfold, insatiable, and sky-aspiring man.&nbsp; And to him, Bassett,
+had been vouchsafed the lordly fortune to be the first to receive this
+message from man&rsquo;s interstellar kin!</p>
+<p>&nbsp;No white man, much less no outland man of the other bush-tribes,
+had gazed upon the Red One and lived.&nbsp; Such the law expounded by
+Ngurn to Bassett.&nbsp; There was such a thing as blood brotherhood.&nbsp;
+Bassett, in return, had often argued in the past.&nbsp; But Ngurn had
+stated solemnly no.&nbsp; Even the blood brotherhood was outside the
+favour of the Red One.&nbsp; Only a man born within the tribe could
+look upon the Red One and live.&nbsp; But now, his guilty secret known
+only to Balatta, whose fear of immolation before the Red One fast-sealed
+her lips, the situation was different.&nbsp; What he had to do was to
+recover from the abominable fevers that weakened him, and gain to civilization.&nbsp;
+Then would he lead an expedition back, and, although the entire population
+of Guadalcanal he destroyed, extract from the heart of the Red One the
+message of the world from other worlds.</p>
+<p>But Bassett&rsquo;s relapses grew more frequent, his brief convalescences
+less and less vigorous, his periods of coma longer, until he came to
+know, beyond the last promptings of the optimism inherent in so tremendous
+a constitution as his own, that he would never live to cross the grass
+lands, perforate the perilous coast jungle, and reach the sea.&nbsp;
+He faded as the Southern Cross rose higher in the sky, till even Balatta
+knew that he would be dead ere the nuptial date determined by his taboo.&nbsp;
+Ngurn made pilgrimage personally and gathered the smoke materials for
+the curing of Bassett&rsquo;s head, and to him made proud announcement
+and exhibition of the artistic perfectness of his intention when Bassett
+should be dead.&nbsp; As for himself, Bassett was not shocked.&nbsp;
+Too long and too deeply had life ebbed down in him to bite him with
+fear of its impending extinction.&nbsp; He continued to persist, alternating
+periods of unconsciousness with periods of semi-consciousness, dreamy
+and unreal, in which he idly wondered whether he had ever truly beheld
+the Red One or whether it was a nightmare fancy of delirium.</p>
+<p>Came the day when all mists and cob-webs dissolved, when he found
+his brain clear as a bell, and took just appraisement of his body&rsquo;s
+weakness.&nbsp; Neither hand nor foot could he lift.&nbsp; So little
+control of his body did he have, that he was scarcely aware of possessing
+one.&nbsp; Lightly indeed his flesh sat upon his soul, and his soul,
+in its briefness of clarity, knew by its very clarity that the black
+of cessation was near.&nbsp; He knew the end was close; knew that in
+all truth he had with his eyes beheld the Red One, the messenger between
+the worlds; knew that he would never live to carry that message to the
+world - that message, for aught to the contrary, which might already
+have waited man&rsquo;s hearing in the heart of Guadalcanal for ten
+thousand years.&nbsp; And Bassett stirred with resolve, calling Ngurn
+to him, out under the shade of the breadfruit tree, and with the old
+devil-devil doctor discussing the terms and arrangements of his last
+life effort, his final adventure in the quick of the flesh.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know the law, O Ngurn,&rdquo; he concluded the matter.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Whoso is not of the folk may not look upon the Red One and live.&nbsp;
+I shall not live anyway.&nbsp; Your young men shall carry me before
+the face of the Red One, and I shall look upon him, and hear his voice,
+and thereupon die, under your hand, O Ngurn.&nbsp; Thus will the three
+things be satisfied: the law, my desire, and your quicker possession
+of my head for which all your preparations wait.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To which Ngurn consented, adding:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is better so.&nbsp; A sick man who cannot get well is foolish
+to live on for so little a while.&nbsp; Also is it better for the living
+that he should go.&nbsp; You have been much in the way of late.&nbsp;
+Not but what it was good for me to talk to such a wise one.&nbsp; But
+for moons of days we have held little talk.&nbsp; Instead, you have
+taken up room in the house of heads, making noises like a dying pig,
+or talking much and loudly in your own language which I do not understand.&nbsp;
+This has been a confusion to me, for I like to think on the great things
+of the light and dark as I turn the heads in the smoke.&nbsp; Your much
+noise has thus been a disturbance to the long-learning and hatching
+of the final wisdom that will be mine before I die.&nbsp; As for you,
+upon whom the dark has already brooded, it is well that you die now.&nbsp;
+And I promise you, in the long days to come when I turn your head in
+the smoke, no man of the tribe shall come in to disturb us.&nbsp; And
+I will tell you many secrets, for I am an old man and very wise, and
+I shall be adding wisdom to wisdom as I turn your head in the smoke.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So a litter was made, and, borne on the shoulders of half a dozen
+of the men, Bassett departed on the last little adventure that was to
+cap the total adventure, for him, of living.&nbsp; With a body of which
+he was scarcely aware, for even the pain had been exhausted out of it,
+and with a bright clear brain that accommodated him to a quiet ecstasy
+of sheer lucidness of thought, he lay back on the lurching litter and
+watched the fading of the passing world, beholding for the last time
+the breadfruit tree before the devil-devil house, the dim day beneath
+the matted jungle roof, the gloomy gorge between the shouldering mountains,
+the saddle of raw limestone, and the mesa of black volcanic sand.</p>
+<p>Down the spiral path of the pit they bore him, encircling the sheening,
+glowing Red One that seemed ever imminent to iridesce from colour and
+light into sweet singing and thunder.&nbsp; And over bones and logs
+of immolated men and gods they bore him, past the horrors of other immolated
+ones that yet lived, to the three-king-post tripod and the huge king-post
+striker.</p>
+<p>Here Bassett, helped by Ngurn and Balatta, weakly sat up, swaying
+weakly from the hips, and with clear, unfaltering, all-seeing eyes gazed
+upon the Red One.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Once, O Ngurn,&rdquo; he said, not taking his eyes from the
+sheening, vibrating surface whereon and wherein all the shades of cherry-red
+played unceasingly, ever a-quiver to change into sound, to become silken
+rustlings, silvery whisperings, golden thrummings of cords, velvet pipings
+of elfland, mellow distances of thunderings.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wait,&rdquo; Ngurn prompted after a long pause, the long-handled
+tomahawk unassumingly ready in his hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Once, O Ngurn,&rdquo; Bassett repeated, &ldquo;let the Red
+One speak so that I may see it speak as well as hear it.&nbsp; Then
+strike, thus, when I raise my hand; for, when I raise my hand, I shall
+drop my head forward and make place for the stroke at the base of my
+neck.&nbsp; But, O Ngurn, I, who am about to pass out of the light of
+day for ever, would like to pass with the wonder-voice of the Red One
+singing greatly in my ears.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I promise you that never will a head be so well cured
+as yours,&rdquo; Ngurn assured him, at the same time signalling the
+tribesmen to man the propelling ropes suspended from the king-post striker.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Your head shall be my greatest piece of work in the curing of
+heads.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Bassett smiled quietly to the old one&rsquo;s conceit, as the great
+carved log, drawn back through two-score feet of space, was released.&nbsp;
+The next moment he was lost in ecstasy at the abrupt and thunderous
+liberation of sound.&nbsp; But such thunder!&nbsp; Mellow it was with
+preciousness of all sounding metals.&nbsp; Archangels spoke in it; it
+was magnificently beautiful before all other sounds; it was invested
+with the intelligence of supermen of planets of other suns; it was the
+voice of God, seducing and commanding to be heard.&nbsp; And - the everlasting
+miracle of that interstellar metal! Bassett, with his own eyes, saw
+colour and colours transform into sound till the whole visible surface
+of the vast sphere was a-crawl and titillant and vaporous with what
+he could not tell was colour or was sound.&nbsp; In that moment the
+interstices of matter were his, and the interfusings and intermating
+transfusings of matter and force.</p>
+<p>Time passed.&nbsp; At the last Bassett was brought back from his
+ecstasy by an impatient movement of Ngurn.&nbsp; He had quite forgotten
+the old devil-devil one.&nbsp; A quick flash of fancy brought a husky
+chuckle into Bassett&rsquo;s throat.&nbsp; His shot-gun lay beside him
+in the litter.&nbsp; All he had to do, muzzle to head, was to press
+the trigger and blow his head into nothingness.</p>
+<p>But why cheat him? was Bassett&rsquo;s next thought.&nbsp; Head-hunting,
+cannibal beast of a human that was as much ape as human, nevertheless
+Old Ngurn had, according to his lights, played squarer than square.&nbsp;
+Ngurn was in himself a forerunner of ethics and contract, of consideration,
+and gentleness in man.&nbsp; No, Bassett decided; it would be a ghastly
+pity and an act of dishonour to cheat the old fellow at the last.&nbsp;
+His head was Ngurn&rsquo;s, and Ngurn&rsquo;s head to cure it would
+be.</p>
+<p>And Bassett, raising his hand in signal, bending forward his head
+as agreed so as to expose cleanly the articulation to his taut spinal
+cord, forgot Balatta, who was merely a woman, a woman merely and only
+and undesired.&nbsp; He knew, without seeing, when the razor-edged hatchet
+rose in the air behind him.&nbsp; And for that instant, ere the end,
+there fell upon Bassett the shadows of the Unknown, a sense of impending
+marvel of the rending of walls before the imaginable.&nbsp; Almost,
+when he knew the blow had started and just ere the edge of steel bit
+the flesh and nerves it seemed that he gazed upon the serene face of
+the Medusa, Truth - And, simultaneous with the bite of the steel on
+the onrush of the dark, in a flashing instant of fancy, he saw the vision
+of his head turning slowly, always turning, in the devil-devil house
+beside the breadfruit tree.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Waikiki, Honolulu,<br /><i>May</i> 22, 1916.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>STORY: THE HUSSY</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>There are some stories that have to be true - the sort that cannot
+be fabricated by a ready fiction-reckoner.&nbsp; And by the same token
+there are some men with stories to tell who cannot be doubted.&nbsp;
+Such a man was Julian Jones.&nbsp; Although I doubt if the average reader
+of this will believe the story Julian Jones told me.&nbsp; Nevertheless
+I believe it.&nbsp; So thoroughly am I convinced of its verity that
+I am willing, nay, eager, to invest capital in the enterprise and embark
+personally on the adventure to a far land.</p>
+<p>It was in the Australian Building at the Panama Pacific Exposition
+that I met him.&nbsp; I was standing before an exhibit of facsimiles
+of the record nuggets which had been discovered in the goldfields of
+the Antipodes.&nbsp; Knobbed, misshapen and massive, it was as difficult
+to believe that they were not real gold as it was to believe the accompanying
+statistics of their weights and values.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what those kangaroo-hunters call a nugget,&rdquo;
+boomed over my shoulder directly at the largest of the specimens.</p>
+<p>I turned and looked up into the dim blue eyes of Julian Jones.&nbsp;
+I looked up, for he stood something like six feet four inches in height.&nbsp;
+His hair, a wispy, sandy yellow, seemed as dimmed and faded as his eyes.&nbsp;
+It may have been the sun which had washed out his colouring; at least
+his face bore the evidence of a prodigious and ardent sun-burn which
+had long since faded to yellow.&nbsp; As his eyes turned from the exhibit
+and focussed on mine I noted a queer look in them as of one who vainly
+tries to recall some fact of supreme importance.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with it as a nugget?&rdquo;&nbsp;
+I demanded.</p>
+<p>The remote, indwelling expression went out of his eyes as he boomed</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, its size.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It does seem large,&rdquo; I admitted.&nbsp; &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s
+no doubt it&rsquo;s authentic.&nbsp; The Australian Government would
+scarcely dare - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Large!&rdquo; he interrupted, with a sniff and a sneer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Largest ever discovered - &rdquo; I started on.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ever discovered!&rdquo;&nbsp; His dim eyes smouldered hotly
+as he proceeded.&nbsp; &ldquo;Do you think that every lump of gold ever
+discovered has got into the newspapers and encyclopedias?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I replied judicially, &ldquo;if there&rsquo;s
+one that hasn&rsquo;t, I don&rsquo;t see how we&rsquo;re to know about
+it.&nbsp; If a really big nugget, or nugget-finder, elects to blush
+unseen - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he broke in quickly.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+saw it with my own eyes, and, besides, I&rsquo;m too tanned to blush
+anyway.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m a railroad man and I&rsquo;ve been in the tropics
+a lot.&nbsp; Why, I used to be the colour of mahogany - real old mahogany,
+and have been taken for a blue-eyed Spaniard more than once - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was my turn to interrupt, and I did.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was that nugget bigger than those in there, Mr. - er - ?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jones, Julian Jones is my name.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He dug into an inner pocket and produced an envelope addressed to
+such a person, care of General Delivery, San Francisco; and I, in turn,
+presented him with my card.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pleased to know you, sir,&rdquo; he said, extending his hand,
+his voice booming as if accustomed to loud noises or wide spaces.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ve heard of you, seen your picture in the papers,
+and all that, and, though I say it that shouldn&rsquo;t, I want to say
+that I didn&rsquo;t care a rap about those articles you wrote on Mexico.&nbsp;
+You&rsquo;re wrong, all wrong.&nbsp; You make the mistake of all Gringos
+in thinking a Mexican is a white man.&nbsp; He ain&rsquo;t.&nbsp; None
+of them ain&rsquo;t - Greasers, Spiggoties, Latin-Americans and all
+the rest of the cattle.&nbsp; Why, sir, they don&rsquo;t think like
+we think, or reason, or act.&nbsp; Even their multiplication table is
+different.&nbsp; You think seven times seven is forty-nine; but not
+them.&nbsp; They work it out different.&nbsp; And white isn&rsquo;t
+white to them, either.&nbsp; Let me give you an example.&nbsp; Buying
+coffee retail for house-keeping in one-pound or ten-pound lots - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How big was that nugget you referred to?&rdquo; I queried
+firmly.&nbsp; &ldquo;As big as the biggest of those?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bigger,&rdquo; he said quietly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Bigger than the
+whole blamed exhibit of them put together, and then some.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He paused and regarded me with a steadfast gaze.&nbsp; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+see no reason why I shouldn&rsquo;t go into the matter with you.&nbsp;
+You&rsquo;ve got a reputation a man ought to be able to trust, and I&rsquo;ve
+read you&rsquo;ve done some tall skylarking yourself in out-of-the-way
+places.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve been browsing around with an eye open for some
+one to go in with me on the proposition.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can trust me,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>And here I am, blazing out into print with the whole story just as
+he told it to me as we sat on a bench by the lagoon before the Palace
+of Fine Arts with the cries of the sea gulls in our ears.&nbsp; Well,
+he should have kept his appointment with me.&nbsp; But I anticipate.</p>
+<p>As we started to leave the building and hunt for a seat, a small
+woman, possibly thirty years of age, with a washed-out complexion of
+the farmer&rsquo;s wife sort, darted up to him in a bird-like way, for
+all the world like the darting veering gulls over our heads and fastened
+herself to his arm with the accuracy and dispatch and inevitableness
+of a piece of machinery.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There you go!&rdquo; she shrilled.&nbsp; &ldquo;A-trottin&rsquo;
+right off and never givin&rsquo; me a thought.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I was formally introduced to her.&nbsp; It was patent that she had
+never heard of me, and she surveyed me bleakly with shrewd black eyes,
+set close together and as beady and restless as a bird&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You ain&rsquo;t goin&rsquo; to tell him about that hussy?&rdquo;
+she complained.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, now, Sarah, this is business, you see,&rdquo; he argued
+plaintively.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been lookin&rsquo; for a likely
+man this long while, and now that he&rsquo;s shown up it seems to me
+I got a right to give him the hang of what happened.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The small woman made no reply, but set her thin lips in a needle-like
+line.&nbsp; She gazed straight before her at the Tower of Jewels with
+so austere an expression that no glint of refracted sunlight could soften
+it.&nbsp; We proceeded slowly to the lagoon, managed to obtain an unoccupied
+seat, and sat down with mutual sighs of relief as we released our weights
+from our tortured sightseeing feet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One does get so mortal weary,&rdquo; asserted the small woman,
+almost defiantly.</p>
+<p>Two swans waddled up from the mirroring water and investigated us.&nbsp;
+When their suspicions of our niggardliness or lack of peanuts had been
+confirmed, Jones half-turned his back on his life-partner and gave me
+his story.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ever been in Ecuador?&nbsp; Then take my advice - and don&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+Though I take that back, for you and me might be hitting it for there
+together if you can rustle up the faith in me and the backbone in yourself
+for the trip.&nbsp; Well, anyway, it ain&rsquo;t so many years ago that
+I came ambling in there on a rusty, foul-bottomed, tramp collier from
+Australia, forty-three days from land to land.&nbsp; Seven knots was
+her speed when everything favoured, and we&rsquo;d had a two weeks&rsquo;
+gale to the north&rsquo;ard of New Zealand, and broke our engines down
+for two days off Pitcairn Island.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was no sailor on her.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m a locomotive engineer.&nbsp;
+But I&rsquo;d made friends with the skipper at Newcastle an&rsquo; come
+along as his guest for as far as Guayaquil.&nbsp; You see, I&rsquo;d
+heard wages was &rsquo;way up on the American railroad runnin&rsquo;
+from that place over the Andes to Quito.&nbsp; Now Guayaquil - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is a fever-hole,&rdquo; I interpolated.</p>
+<p>Julian Jones nodded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thomas Nast died there of it within a month after he landed.
+- He was our great American cartoonist,&rdquo; I added.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know him,&rdquo; Julian Jones said shortly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But I do know he wasn&rsquo;t the first to pass out by a long
+shot.&nbsp; Why, look you the way I found it.&nbsp; The pilot grounds
+is sixty miles down the river.&nbsp; &lsquo;How&rsquo;s the fever?&rsquo;
+said I to the pilot who came aboard in the early morning.&nbsp; &lsquo;See
+that Hamburg barque,&rsquo; said he, pointing to a sizable ship at anchor.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Captain and fourteen men dead of it already, and the cook and
+two men dying right now, and they&rsquo;re the last left of her.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And by jinks he told the truth.&nbsp; And right then they
+were dying forty a day in Guayaquil of Yellow Jack.&nbsp; But that was
+nothing, as I was to find out.&nbsp; Bubonic plague and small-pox were
+raging, while dysentery and pneumonia were reducing the population,
+and the railroad was raging worst of all.&nbsp; I mean that.&nbsp; For
+them that insisted in riding on it, it was more dangerous than all the
+other diseases put together.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When we dropped anchor off Guayaquil half a dozen skippers
+from other steamers came on board to warn our skipper not to let any
+of his crew or officers go ashore except the ones he wanted to lose.&nbsp;
+A launch came off for me from Duran, which is on the other side of the
+river and is the terminal of the railroad.&nbsp; And it brought off
+a man that soared up the gangway three jumps at a time he was that eager
+to get aboard.&nbsp; When he hit the deck he hadn&rsquo;t time to speak
+to any of us.&nbsp; He just leaned out over the rail and shook his fist
+at Duran and shouted: &lsquo;I beat you to it!&nbsp; I beat you to it!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Who&rsquo;d you beat to it, friend?&rsquo; I asked.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;The railroad,&rsquo; he said, as he unbuckled the straps and
+took off a big &rsquo;44 Colt&rsquo;s automatic from where he wore it
+handy on his left side under his coat, &lsquo;I staved as long as I
+agreed - three months - and it didn&rsquo;t get me.&nbsp; I was a conductor.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And that was the railroad I was to work for.&nbsp; All of
+which was nothing to what he told me in the next few minutes.&nbsp;
+The road ran from sea level at Duran up to twelve thousand feet on Chimborazo
+and down to ten thousand at Quito on the other side the range.&nbsp;
+And it was so dangerous that the trains didn&rsquo;t run nights.&nbsp;
+The through passengers had to get off and sleep in the towns at night
+while the train waited for daylight.&nbsp; And each train carried a
+guard of Ecuadoriano soldiers which was the most dangerous of all.&nbsp;
+They were supposed to protect the train crews, but whenever trouble
+started they unlimbered their rifles and joined the mob.&nbsp; You see,
+whenever a train wreck occurred, the first cry of the spiggoties was
+&lsquo;Kill the Gringos!&rsquo;&nbsp; They always did that, and proceeded
+to kill the train crew and whatever chance Gringo passengers that&rsquo;d
+escaped being killed in the accident.&nbsp; Which is their kind of arithmetic,
+which I told you a while back as being different from ours.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shucks!&nbsp; Before the day was out I was to find out for
+myself that that ex-conductor wasn&rsquo;t lying.&nbsp; It was over
+at Duran.&nbsp; I was to take my run on the first division out to Quito,
+for which place I was to start next morning - only one through train
+running every twenty-four hours.&nbsp; It was the afternoon of my first
+day, along about four o&rsquo;clock, when the boilers of the <i>Governor
+Hancock</i> exploded and she sank in sixty feet of water alongside the
+dock.&nbsp; She was the big ferry boat that carried the railroad passengers
+across the river to Guayaquil.&nbsp; It was a bad accident, but it was
+the cause of worse that followed.&nbsp; By half-past four, big trainloads
+began to arrive.&nbsp; It was a feast day and they&rsquo;d run an excursion
+up country but of Guayaquil, and this was the crowd coming back.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And the crowd - there was five thousand of them - wanted to
+get ferried across, and the ferry was at the bottom of the river, which
+wasn&rsquo;t our fault.&nbsp; But by the Spiggoty arithmetic, it was.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Kill the Gringos!&rsquo; shouts one of them.&nbsp; And right
+there the beans were spilled.&nbsp; Most of us got away by the skin
+of our teeth.&nbsp; I raced on the heels of the Master Mechanic, carrying
+one of his babies for him, for the locomotives that was just pulling
+out.&nbsp; You see, way down there away from everywhere they just got
+to save their locomotives in times of trouble, because, without them,
+a railroad can&rsquo;t be run.&nbsp; Half a dozen American wives and
+as many children were crouching on the cab floors along with the rest
+of us when we pulled out; and the Ecuadoriano soldiers, who should have
+been protecting our lives and property, turned loose with their rifles
+and must have given us all of a thousand rounds before we got out of
+range.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We camped up country and didn&rsquo;t come back to clean up
+until next day.&nbsp; It was some cleaning.&nbsp; Every flat-car, box-car,
+coach, asthmatic switch engine, and even hand-car that mob of Spiggoties
+had shoved off the dock into sixty feet of water on top of the <i>Governor
+Hancock</i>.&nbsp; They&rsquo;d burnt the round house, set fire to the
+coal bunkers, and made a scandal of the repair shops.&nbsp; Oh, yes,
+and there were three of our fellows they&rsquo;d got that we had to
+bury mighty quick.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s hot weather all the time down there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Julian Jones came to a full pause and over his shoulder studied the
+straight-before-her gaze and forbidding expression of his wife&rsquo;s
+face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I ain&rsquo;t forgotten the nugget,&rdquo; he assured me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nor the hussy,&rdquo; the little woman snapped, apparently
+at the mud-hens paddling on the surface of the lagoon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been travelling toward the nugget right along -
+&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There was never no reason for you to stay in that dangerous
+country,&rdquo; his wife snapped in on him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Sarah,&rdquo; he appealed.&nbsp; &ldquo;I was working
+for you right along.&rdquo;&nbsp; And to me he explained: &ldquo;The
+risk was big, but so was the pay.&nbsp; Some months I earned as high
+as five hundred gold.&nbsp; And here was Sarah waiting for me back in
+Nebraska - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An&rsquo; us engaged two years,&rdquo; she complained to the
+Tower of Jewels.</p>
+<p>&ldquo; - What of the strike, and me being blacklisted, and getting
+typhoid down in Australia, and everything,&rdquo; he went on.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;And luck was with me on that railroad.&nbsp; Why, I saw fellows
+fresh from the States pass out, some of them not a week on their first
+run.&nbsp; If the diseases and the railroad didn&rsquo;t get them, then
+it was the Spiggoties got them.&nbsp; But it just wasn&rsquo;t my fate,
+even that time I rode my engine down to the bottom of a forty-foot washout.&nbsp;
+I lost my fireman; and the conductor and the Superintendent of Rolling
+Stock (who happened to be running down to Duran to meet his bride) had
+their heads knifed off by the Spiggoties and paraded around on poles.&nbsp;
+But I lay snug as a bug under a couple of feet of tender coal, and they
+thought I&rsquo;d headed for tall timber - lay there a day and a night
+till the excitement cooled down.&nbsp; Yes, I was lucky.&nbsp; The worst
+that happened to me was I caught a cold once, and another time had a
+carbuncle.&nbsp; But the other fellows!&nbsp; They died like flies,
+what of Yellow Jack, pneumonia, the Spiggoties, and the railroad.&nbsp;
+The trouble was I didn&rsquo;t have much chance to pal with them.&nbsp;
+No sooner&rsquo;d I get some intimate with one of them he&rsquo;d up
+and die - all but a fireman named Andrews, and he went loco for keeps.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I made good on my job from the first, and lived in Quito in
+a &rsquo;dobe house with whacking big Spanish tiles on the roof that
+I&rsquo;d rented.&nbsp; And I never had much trouble with the Spiggoties,
+what of letting them sneak free rides in the tender or on the cowcatcher.&nbsp;
+Me throw them off?&nbsp; Never!&nbsp; I took notice, when Jack Harris
+put off a bunch of them, that I attended his funeral <i>muy</i> <i>pronto</i>
+- &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Speak English,&rdquo; the little woman beside him snapped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sarah just can&rsquo;t bear to tolerate me speaking Spanish,&rdquo;
+he apologized.&nbsp; &ldquo;It gets so on her nerves that I promised
+not to.&nbsp; Well, as I was saying, the goose hung high and everything
+was going hunky-dory, and I was piling up my wages to come north to
+Nebraska and marry Sarah, when I run on to Vahna - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The hussy!&rdquo; Sarah hissed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Sarah,&rdquo; her towering giant of a husband begged,
+&ldquo;I just got to mention her or I can&rsquo;t tell about the nugget.
+- It was one night when I was taking a locomotive - no train - down
+to Amato, about thirty miles from Quito.&nbsp; Seth Manners was my fireman.&nbsp;
+I was breaking him in to engineer for himself, and I was letting him
+run the locomotive while I sat up in his seat meditating about Sarah
+here.&nbsp; I&rsquo;d just got a letter from her, begging as usual for
+me to come home and hinting as usual about the dangers of an unmarried
+man like me running around loose in a country full of senoritas and
+fandangos.&nbsp; Lord!&nbsp; If she could only a-seen them.&nbsp; Positive
+frights, that&rsquo;s what they are, their faces painted white as corpses
+and their lips red as - as some of the train wrecks I&rsquo;ve helped
+clean up.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was a lovely April night, not a breath of wind, and a tremendous
+big moon shining right over the top of Chimborazo. - Some mountain that.&nbsp;
+The railroad skirted it twelve thousand feet above sea level, and the
+top of it ten thousand feet higher than that.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mebbe I was drowsing, with Seth running the engine; but he
+slammed on the brakes so sudden hard that I darn near went through the
+cab window.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;What the - &rsquo; I started to yell, and &lsquo;Holy
+hell,&rsquo; Seth says, as both of us looked at what was on the track.&nbsp;
+And I agreed with Seth entirely in his remark.&nbsp; It was an Indian
+girl - and take it from me, Indians ain&rsquo;t Spiggoties by any manner
+of means.&nbsp; Seth had managed to fetch a stop within twenty feet
+of her, and us bowling down hill at that!&nbsp; But the girl.&nbsp;
+She - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>I saw the form of Mrs. Julian Jones stiffen, although she kept her
+gaze fixed balefully upon two mud-hens that were prowling along the
+lagoon shallows below us.&nbsp; &ldquo;The hussy!&rdquo; she hissed,
+once and implacably.&nbsp; Jones had stopped at the sound, but went
+on immediately.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She was a tall girl, slim and slender, you know the kind,
+with black hair, remarkably long hanging, down loose behind her, as
+she stood there no more afraid than nothing, her arms spread out to
+stop the engine.&nbsp; She was wearing a slimpsy sort of garment wrapped
+around her that wasn&rsquo;t cloth but ocelot skins, soft and dappled,
+and silky.&nbsp; It was all she had on - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The hussy!&rdquo; breathed Mrs. Jones.</p>
+<p>But Mr. Jones went on, making believe that he was unaware of the
+interruption.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Hell of a way to stop a locomotive,&rsquo; I complained
+at Seth, as I climbed down on to the right of way.&nbsp; I walked past
+our engine and up to the girl, and what do you think?&nbsp; Her eyes
+were shut tight.&nbsp; She was trembling that violent that you would
+see it by the moonlight.&nbsp; And she was barefoot, too.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;What&rsquo;s the row?&rsquo; I said, none too gentle.&nbsp;
+She gave a start, seemed to come out of her trance, and opened her eyes.&nbsp;
+Say!&nbsp; They were big and black and beautiful.&nbsp; Believe me,
+she was some looker - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The hussy!&rdquo;&nbsp; At which hiss the two mud-hens veered
+away a few feet.&nbsp; But Jones was getting himself in hand, and didn&rsquo;t
+even blink.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;What are you stopping this locomotive for?&rsquo; I
+demanded in Spanish.&nbsp; Nary an answer.&nbsp; She stared at me, then
+at the snorting engine and then burst into tears, which you&rsquo;ll
+admit is uncommon behaviour for an Indian woman.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;If you try to get rides that way,&rsquo; I slung at
+her in Spiggoty Spanish (which they tell me is some different from regular
+Spanish), &lsquo;you&rsquo;ll be taking one smeared all over our cowcatcher
+and headlight, and it&rsquo;ll be up to my fireman to scrape you off.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My Spiggoty Spanish wasn&rsquo;t much to brag on, but I could
+see she understood, though she only shook her head and wouldn&rsquo;t
+speak.&nbsp; But great Moses, she was some looker - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>I glanced apprehensively at Mrs. Jones, who must have caught me out
+of the tail of her eye, for she muttered: &ldquo;If she hadn&rsquo;t
+been do you think he&rsquo;d a-taken her into his house to live?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now hold on, Sarah,&rdquo; he protested.&nbsp; &ldquo;That
+ain&rsquo;t fair.&nbsp; Besides, I&rsquo;m telling this. - Next thing,
+Seth yells at me, &lsquo;Goin&rsquo; to stay here all night?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Come on,&rsquo; I said to the girl, &lsquo;and climb
+on board.&nbsp; But next time you want a ride don&rsquo;t flag a locomotive
+between stations.&rsquo;&nbsp; She followed along; but when I got to
+the step and turned to give her a lift-up, she wasn&rsquo;t there.&nbsp;
+I went forward again.&nbsp; Not a sign of her.&nbsp; Above and below
+was sheer cliff, and the track stretched ahead a hundred yards clear
+and empty.&nbsp; And then I spotted her, crouched down right against
+the cowcatcher, that close I&rsquo;d almost stepped on her.&nbsp; If
+we&rsquo;d started up, we&rsquo;d have run over her in a second.&nbsp;
+It was all so nonsensical, I never could make out her actions.&nbsp;
+Maybe she was trying to suicide.&nbsp; I grabbed her by the wrist and
+jerked her none too gentle to her feet.&nbsp; And she came along all
+right.&nbsp; Women do know when a man means business.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I glanced from this Goliath to his little, bird-eyed spouse, and
+wondered if he had ever tried to mean business with her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seth kicked at first, but I boosted her into the cab and made
+her sit up beside me - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I suppose Seth was busy running the engine,&rdquo; Mrs.
+Jones observed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was breaking him in, wasn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr. Jones
+protested.&nbsp; &ldquo;So we made the run into Amato.&nbsp; She&rsquo;d
+never opened her mouth once, and no sooner&rsquo;d the engine stopped
+than she&rsquo;d jumped to the ground and was gone.&nbsp; Just like
+that.&nbsp; Not a thank you kindly.&nbsp; Nothing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But next morning when we came to pull out for Quito with a
+dozen flat cars loaded with rails, there she was in the cab waiting
+for us; and in the daylight I could see how much better a looker she
+was than the night before.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Huh! she&rsquo;s adopted you,&rsquo; Seth grins.&nbsp;
+And it looked like it.&nbsp; She just stood there and looked at me -
+at us - like a loving hound dog that you love, that you&rsquo;ve caught
+with a string of sausages inside of him, and that just knows you ain&rsquo;t
+going to lift a hand to him.&nbsp; &lsquo;Go chase yourself!&rsquo;
+I told her <i>pronto</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; (Mrs. Jones her proximity noticeable
+with a wince at the Spanish word.)&nbsp; &ldquo;You see, Sarah, I&rsquo;d
+no use for her, even at the start.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Jones stiffened.&nbsp; Her lips moved soundlessly, but I knew
+to what syllables.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what made it hardest was Seth jeering at me.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+can&rsquo;t shake her that way,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;You saved
+her life - &rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t,&rsquo; I said sharply;
+&lsquo;it was you.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;But she thinks you did, which
+is the same thing,&rsquo; he came back at me.&nbsp; &lsquo;And now she
+belongs to you.&nbsp; Custom of the country, as you ought to know.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Heathenish,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jones, and though her steady
+gaze was set upon the Tower of Jewels I knew she was making no reference
+to its architecture.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;s come to do light housekeeping for you,&rsquo;
+Seth grinned.&nbsp; I let him rave, though afterwards I kept him throwing
+in the coal too fast to work his mouth very much.&nbsp; Why, say, when
+I got to the spot where I picked her up, and stopped the train for her
+to get off, she just flopped down on her knees, got a hammerlock with
+her arms around my knees, and cried all over my shoes.&nbsp; What was
+I to do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With no perceptible movement that I was aware of, Mrs. Jones advertised
+her certitude of knowledge of what <i>she</i> would have done.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And the moment we pulled into Quito, she did what she&rsquo;d
+done before - vanished.&nbsp; Sarah never believes me when I say how
+relieved I felt to be quit of her.&nbsp; But it was not to be.&nbsp;
+I got to my &rsquo;dobe house and managed a cracking fine dinner my
+cook had ready for me.&nbsp; She was mostly Spiggoty and half Indian,
+and her name was Paloma. - Now, Sarah, haven&rsquo;t I told you she
+was older&rsquo;n a grandmother, and looked more like a buzzard than
+a dove?&nbsp; Why, I couldn&rsquo;t bear to eat with her around where
+I could look at her.&nbsp; But she did make things comfortable, and
+she was some economical when it came to marketing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That afternoon, after a big long siesta, what&rsquo;d I find
+in the kitchen, just as much at home as if she belonged there, but that
+blamed Indian girl.&nbsp; And old Paloma was squatting at the girl&rsquo;s
+feet and rubbing the girl&rsquo;s knees and legs like for rheumatism,
+which I knew the girl didn&rsquo;t have from the way I&rsquo;d sized
+up the walk of her, and keeping time to the rubbing with a funny sort
+of gibberish chant.&nbsp; And I let loose right there and then.&nbsp;
+As Sarah knows, I never could a-bear women around the house - young,
+unmarried women, I mean.&nbsp; But it was no go!&nbsp; Old Paloma sided
+with the girl, and said if the girl went she went, too.&nbsp; Also,
+she called me more kinds of a fool than the English language has accommodation
+for.&nbsp; You&rsquo;d like the Spanish lingo, Sarah, for expressing
+yourself in such ways, and you&rsquo;d have liked old Paloma, too.&nbsp;
+She was a good woman, though she didn&rsquo;t have any teeth and her
+face could kill a strong man&rsquo;s appetite in the cradle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I gave in.&nbsp; I had to.&nbsp; Except for the excuse that
+she needed Vahna&rsquo;s help around the house (which she didn&rsquo;t
+at all), old Paloma never said why she stuck up for the girl.&nbsp;
+Anyway, Vahna was a quiet thing, never in the way.&nbsp; And she never
+gadded.&nbsp; Just sat in-doors jabbering with Paloma and helping with
+the chores.&nbsp; But I wasn&rsquo;t long in getting on to that she
+was afraid of something.&nbsp; She would look up, that anxious it hurt,
+whenever anybody called, like some of the boys to have a gas or a game
+of pedro.&nbsp; I tried to worm it out of Paloma what was worrying the
+girl, but all the old woman did was to look solemn and shake her head
+like all the devils in hell was liable to precipitate a visit on us.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then one day Vahna had a visitor.&nbsp; I&rsquo;d just
+come in from a run and was passing the time of day with her - I had
+to be polite, even if she had butted in on me and come to live in my
+house for keeps - when I saw a queer expression come into her eyes.&nbsp;
+In the doorway stood an Indian boy.&nbsp; He looked like her, but was
+younger and slimmer.&nbsp; She took him into the kitchen and they must
+have had a great palaver, for he didn&rsquo;t leave until after dark.&nbsp;
+Inside the week he came back, but I missed him.&nbsp; When I got home,
+Paloma put a fat nugget of gold into my hand, which Vahna had sent him
+for.&nbsp; The blamed thing weighed all of two pounds and was worth
+more than five hundred dollars.&nbsp; She explained that Vahna wanted
+me to take it to pay for her keep.&nbsp; And I had to take it to keep
+peace in the house.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then, after a long time, came another visitor.&nbsp; We were
+sitting before the fire - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Him and the hussy,&rdquo; quoth Mrs. Jones.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And Paloma,&rdquo; he added quickly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Him and his cook and his light housekeeper sitting by the
+fire,&rdquo; she amended.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I admit Vahna did like me a whole heap,&rdquo; he asserted
+recklessly, then modified with a pang of caution: &ldquo;A heap more
+than was good for her, seeing that I had no inclination her way.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, as I was saying, she had another visitor.&nbsp; He was
+a lean, tall, white-headed old Indian, with a beak on him like an eagle.&nbsp;
+He walked right in without knocking.&nbsp; Vahna gave a little cry that
+was half like a yelp and half like a gasp, and flumped down on her knees
+before me, pleading to me with deer&rsquo;s eyes and to him with the
+eyes of a deer about to be killed that don&rsquo;t want to be killed.&nbsp;
+Then, for a minute that seemed as long as a life-time, she and the old
+fellow glared at each other.&nbsp; Paloma was the first to talk, in
+his own lingo, for he talked back to her.&nbsp; But great Moses, if
+he wasn&rsquo;t the high and mighty one!&nbsp; Paloma&rsquo;s old knees
+were shaking, and she cringed to him like a hound dog.&nbsp; And all
+this in my own house!&nbsp; I&rsquo;d have thrown him out on his neck,
+only he was so old.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If the things he said to Vahna were as terrible as the way
+he looked!&nbsp; Say!&nbsp; He just spit words at her!&nbsp; But Paloma
+kept whimpering and butting in, till something she said got across,
+because his face relaxed.&nbsp; He condescended to give me the once
+over and fired some question at Vahna.&nbsp; She hung her head, and
+looked foolish, and blushed, and then replied with a single word and
+a shake of the head.&nbsp; And with that he just naturally turned on
+his heel and beat it.&nbsp; I guess she&rsquo;d said &lsquo;No.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For some time after that Vahna used to fluster up whenever
+she saw me.&nbsp; Then she took to the kitchen for a spell.&nbsp; But
+after a long time she began hanging around the big room again.&nbsp;
+She was still mighty shy, but she&rsquo;d keep on following me about
+with those big eyes of hers - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The hussy!&rdquo; I heard plainly.&nbsp; But Julian Jones
+and I were pretty well used to it by this time.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind saying that I was getting some interested
+myself - oh, not in the way Sarah never lets up letting me know she
+thinks.&nbsp; That two-pound nugget was what had me going.&nbsp; If
+Vahna&rsquo;d put me wise to where it came from, I could say good-bye
+to railroading and hit the high places for Nebraska and Sarah.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then the beans were spilled . . . by accident.&nbsp; Come
+a letter from Wisconsin.&nbsp; My Aunt Eliza &rsquo;d died and up and
+left me her big farm.&nbsp; I let out a whoop when I read it; but I
+could have canned my joy, for I was jobbed out of it by the courts and
+lawyers afterward - not a cent to me, and I&rsquo;m still paying &rsquo;m
+in instalments.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I didn&rsquo;t know, then; and I prepared to pull back
+to God&rsquo;s country.&nbsp; Paloma got sore, and Vahna got the weeps.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t go!&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t go!&rsquo;&nbsp; That was her
+song.&nbsp; But I gave notice on my job, and wrote a letter to Sarah
+here - didn&rsquo;t I, Sarah?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That night, sitting by the fire like at a funeral, Vahna really
+loosened up for the first time.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t go,&rsquo; she says to me, with old Paloma
+nodding agreement with her.&nbsp; &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll show you where my
+brother got the nugget, if you don&rsquo;t go.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Too
+late,&rsquo; said I.&nbsp; And I told her why.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And told her about me waiting for you back in Nebraska,&rdquo;
+Mrs. Jones observed in cold, passionless tones.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Sarah, why should I hurt a poor Indian girl&rsquo;s feelings?&nbsp;
+Of course I didn&rsquo;t.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, she and Paloma talked Indian some more, and then Vahna
+says: &lsquo;If you stay, I&rsquo;ll show you the biggest nugget that
+is the father of all other nuggets.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;How big?&rsquo;
+I asked.&nbsp; &lsquo;As big as me?&rsquo;&nbsp; She laughed.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Bigger than you,&rsquo; she says, &lsquo;much, much bigger.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;They don&rsquo;t grow that way,&rsquo; I said.&nbsp; But she
+said she&rsquo;d seen it and Paloma backed her up.&nbsp; Why, to listen
+to them you&rsquo;d have thought there was millions in that one nugget.&nbsp;
+Paloma &rsquo;d never seen it herself, but she&rsquo;d heard about it.&nbsp;
+A secret of the tribe which she couldn&rsquo;t share, being only half
+Indian herself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Julian Jones paused and heaved a sigh.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And they kept on insisting until I fell for - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The hussy,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jones, pert as a bird, at the
+ready instant.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;No; for the nugget.&nbsp; What of Aunt Eliza&rsquo;s
+farm I was rich enough to quit railroading, but not rich enough to turn
+my back on big money - and I just couldn&rsquo;t help believing them
+two women.&nbsp; Gee!&nbsp; I could be another Vanderbilt, or J. P.
+Morgan.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s the way I thought; and I started in to pump
+Vahna.&nbsp; But she wouldn&rsquo;t give down.&nbsp; &lsquo;You come
+along with me,&rsquo; she says.&nbsp; &lsquo;We can be back here in
+a couple of weeks with all the gold the both of us can carry.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;We&rsquo;ll take a burro, or a pack-train of burros,&rsquo; was
+my suggestion.&nbsp; But nothing doing.&nbsp; And Paloma agreed with
+her.&nbsp; It was too dangerous.&nbsp; The Indians would catch us.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The two of us pulled out when the nights were moonlight.&nbsp;
+We travelled only at night, and laid up in the days.&nbsp; Vahna wouldn&rsquo;t
+let me light a fire, and I missed my coffee something fierce.&nbsp;
+We got up in the real high mountains of the main Andes, where the snow
+on one pass gave us some trouble; but the girl knew the trails, and,
+though we didn&rsquo;t waste any time, we were a full week getting there.&nbsp;
+I know the general trend of our travel, because I carried a pocket compass;
+and the general trend is all I need to get there again, because of that
+peak.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s no mistaking it.&nbsp; There ain&rsquo;t another
+peak like it in the world.&nbsp; Now, I&rsquo;m not telling you its
+particular shape, but when you and I head out for it from Quito I&rsquo;ll
+take you straight to it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no easy thing to climb, and the person doesn&rsquo;t
+live that can climb it at night.&nbsp; We had to take the daylight to
+it, and didn&rsquo;t reach the top till after sunset.&nbsp; Why, I could
+take hours and hours telling you about that last climb, which I won&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+The top was flat as a billiard table, about a quarter of an acre in
+size, and was almost clean of snow.&nbsp; Vahna told me that the great
+winds that usually blew, kept the snow off of it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We were winded, and I got mountain sickness so bad that I
+had to stretch out for a spell.&nbsp; Then, when the moon come up, I
+took a prowl around.&nbsp; It didn&rsquo;t take long, and I didn&rsquo;t
+catch a sight or a smell of anything that looked like gold.&nbsp; And
+when I asked Vahna, she only laughed and clapped her hands.&nbsp; Meantime
+my mountain sickness tuned up something fierce, and I sat down on a
+big rock to wait for it to ease down.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Come on, now,&rsquo; I said, when I felt better.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Stop your fooling and tell me where that nugget is.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;It&rsquo;s nearer to you right now than I&rsquo;ll ever get,&rsquo;
+she answered, her big eyes going sudden wistful.&nbsp; &lsquo;All you
+Gringos are alike.&nbsp; Gold is the love of your heart, and women don&rsquo;t
+count much.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t say anything.&nbsp; That was no time to tell
+her about Sarah here.&nbsp; But Vahna seemed to shake off her depressed
+feelings, and began to laugh and tease again.&nbsp; &lsquo;How do you
+like it?&rsquo; she asked.&nbsp; &lsquo;Like what?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;The
+nugget you&rsquo;re sitting on.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I jumped up as though it was a red-hot stove.&nbsp; And all
+it was was a rock.&nbsp; I felt nay heart sink.&nbsp; Either she had
+gone clean loco or this was her idea of a joke.&nbsp; Wrong on both
+counts.&nbsp; She gave me the hatchet and told me to take a hack at
+the boulder, which I did, again and again, for yellow spots sprang up
+from under every blow.&nbsp; By the great Moses! it was gold!&nbsp;
+The whole blamed boulder!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jones rose suddenly to his full height and flung out his long arms,
+his face turned to the southern skies.&nbsp; The movement shot panic
+into the heart of a swan that had drawn nearer with amiably predatory
+designs.&nbsp; Its consequent abrupt retreat collided it with a stout
+old lady, who squealed and dropped her bag of peanuts.&nbsp; Jones sat
+down and resumed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gold, I tell you, solid gold and that pure and soft that I
+chopped chips out of it.&nbsp; It had been coated with some sort of
+rain-proof paint or lacquer made out of asphalt or something.&nbsp;
+No wonder I&rsquo;d taken it for a rock.&nbsp; It was ten feet long,
+all of five feet through, and tapering to both ends like an egg.&nbsp;
+Here.&nbsp; Take a look at this.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>From his pocket he drew and opened a leather case, from which he
+took an object wrapped in tissue-paper.&nbsp; Unwrapping it, he dropped
+into my hand a chip of pure soft gold, the size of a ten-dollar gold-piece.&nbsp;
+I could make out the greyish substance on one side with which it had
+been painted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I chopped that from one end of the thing,&rdquo; Jones went
+on, replacing the chip in its paper and leather case.&nbsp; &ldquo;And
+lucky I put it in my pocket.&nbsp; For right at my back came one loud
+word - more like a croak than a word, in my way of thinking.&nbsp; And
+there was that lean old fellow with the eagle beak that had dropped
+in on us one night.&nbsp; And there was about thirty Indians with him
+- all slim young fellows.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Vahna&rsquo;d flopped down and begun whimpering, but I told
+her, &lsquo;Get up and make friends with them for me.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;No,
+no,&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is death.&nbsp; Good-bye, <i>amigo</i>
+- &rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Here Mrs. Jones winced, and her husband abruptly checked the particular
+flow of his narrative.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Then get up and fight along with me,&rsquo; I said
+to her.&nbsp; And she did.&nbsp; She was some hellion, there on the
+top of the world, clawing and scratching tooth and nail - a regular
+she cat.&nbsp; And I wasn&rsquo;t idle, though all I had was that hatchet
+and my long arms.&nbsp; But they were too many for me, and there was
+no place for me to put my back against a wall.&nbsp; When I come to,
+minutes after they&rsquo;d cracked me on the head - here, feel this.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Removing his hat, Julian Jones guided my finger tips through his
+thatch of sandy hair until they sank into an indentation.&nbsp; It was
+fully three inches long, and went into the bone itself of the skull.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When I come to, there was Vahna spread-eagled on top of the
+nugget, and the old fellow with a beak jabbering away solemnly as if
+going through some sort of religious exercises.&nbsp; In his hand he
+had a stone knife - you know, a thin, sharp sliver of some obsidian-like
+stuff same as they make arrow-heads out of.&nbsp; I couldn&rsquo;t lift
+a hand, being held down, and being too weak besides.&nbsp; And - well,
+anyway, that stone knife did for her, and me they didn&rsquo;t even
+do the honour of killing there on top their sacred peak.&nbsp; They
+chucked me off of it like so much carrion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And the buzzards didn&rsquo;t get me either.&nbsp; I can see
+the moonlight yet, shining on all those peaks of snow, as I went down.&nbsp;
+Why, sir, it was a five-hundred-foot fall, only I didn&rsquo;t make
+it.&nbsp; I went into a big snow-drift in a crevice.&nbsp; And when
+I come to (hours after I know, for it was full day when I next saw the
+sun), I found myself in a regular snow-cave or tunnel caused by the
+water from the melting snow running along the ledge.&nbsp; In fact,
+the stone above actually overhung just beyond where I first landed.&nbsp;
+A few feet more to the side, either way, and I&rsquo;d almost be going
+yet.&nbsp; It was a straight miracle, that&rsquo;s what it was.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I paid for it.&nbsp; It was two years and over before
+I knew what happened.&nbsp; All I knew was that I was Julian Jones and
+that I&rsquo;d been blacklisted in the big strike, and that I was married
+to Sarah here.&nbsp; I mean that.&nbsp; I didn&rsquo;t know anything
+in between, and when Sarah tried to talk about it, it gave me pains
+in the head.&nbsp; I mean my head was queer, and I knew it was queer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then, sitting on the porch of her father&rsquo;s farmhouse
+back in Nebraska one moonlight evening, Sarah came out and put that
+gold chip into my hand.&nbsp; Seems she&rsquo;d just found it in the
+torn lining of the trunk I&rsquo;d brought back from Ecuador - I who
+for two years didn&rsquo;t even know I&rsquo;d been to Ecuador, or Australia,
+or anything!&nbsp; Well, I just sat there looking at the chip in the
+moonlight, and turning it over and over and figuring what it was and
+where it&rsquo;d come from, when all of a sudden there was a snap inside
+my head as if something had broken, and then I could see Vahna spread-eagled
+on that big nugget and the old fellow with the beak waving the stone
+knife, and . . . and everything.&nbsp; That is, everything that had
+happened from the time I first left Nebraska to when I crawled to the
+daylight out of the snow after they had chucked me off the mountain-top.&nbsp;
+But everything that&rsquo;d happened after that I&rsquo;d clean forgotten.&nbsp;
+When Sarah said I was her husband, I wouldn&rsquo;t listen to her.&nbsp;
+Took all her family and the preacher that&rsquo;d married us to convince
+me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Later on I wrote to Seth Manners.&nbsp; The railroad hadn&rsquo;t
+killed him yet, and he pieced out a lot for me.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll show
+you his letters.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve got them at the hotel.&nbsp; One day,
+he said, making his regular run, I crawled out on to the track.&nbsp;
+I didn&rsquo;t stand upright, I just crawled.&nbsp; He took me for a
+calf, or a big dog, at first.&nbsp; I wasn&rsquo;t anything human, he
+said, and I didn&rsquo;t know him or anything.&nbsp; As near as I can
+make out, it was ten days after the mountain-top to the time Seth picked
+me up.&nbsp; What I ate I don&rsquo;t know.&nbsp; Maybe I didn&rsquo;t
+eat.&nbsp; Then it was doctors at Quito, and Paloma nursing me (she
+must have packed that gold chip in my trunk), until they found out I
+was a man without a mind, and the railroad sent me back to Nebraska.&nbsp;
+At any rate, that&rsquo;s what Seth writes me.&nbsp; Of myself, I don&rsquo;t
+know.&nbsp; But Sarah here knows.&nbsp; She corresponded with the railroad
+before they shipped me and all that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Jones nodded affirmation of his words, sighed and evidenced
+unmistakable signs of eagerness to go.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I ain&rsquo;t been able to work since,&rdquo; her husband
+continued.&nbsp; &ldquo;And I ain&rsquo;t been able to figure out how
+to get back that big nugget.&nbsp; Sarah&rsquo;s got money of her own,
+and she won&rsquo;t let go a penny - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t get down to <i>that</i> country no more!&rdquo;
+she broke forth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But, Sarah, Vahna&rsquo;s dead - you know that,&rdquo; Julian
+Jones protested.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything about anything,&rdquo; she answered
+decisively, &ldquo;except that <i>that</i> country is no place for a
+married man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her lips snapped together, and she fixed an unseeing stare across
+to where the afternoon sun was beginning to glow into sunset.&nbsp;
+I gazed for a moment at her face, white, plump, tiny, and implacable,
+and gave her up.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How do you account for such a mass of gold being there?&rdquo;
+I queried of Julian Jones.&nbsp; &ldquo;A solid-gold meteor that fell
+out of the sky?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not for a moment.&rdquo;&nbsp; He shook his head.&nbsp; &ldquo;
+It was carried there by the Indians.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Up a mountain like that - and such enormous weight and size!&rdquo;
+I objected.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just as easy,&rdquo; he smiled.&nbsp; &ldquo;I used to be
+stumped by that proposition myself, after I got my memory back.&nbsp;
+Now how in Sam Hill - &rsquo; I used to begin, and then spend hours
+figuring at it.&nbsp; And then when I got the answer I felt downright
+idiotic, it was that easy.&rdquo;&nbsp; He paused, then announced: &ldquo;They
+didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you just - said they did.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They did and they didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; was his enigmatic reply.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Of course they never carried that monster nugget up there.&nbsp;
+What they did was to carry up its contents.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He waited until he saw enlightenment dawn in my face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then of course melted all the gold, or welded it, or smelted
+it, all into one piece.&nbsp; You know the first Spaniards down there,
+under a leader named Pizarro, were a gang of robbers and cut-throats.&nbsp;
+They went through the country like the hoof-and-mouth disease, and killed
+the Indians off like cattle.&nbsp; You see, the Indians had lots of
+gold.&nbsp; Well, what the Spaniards didn&rsquo;t get, the surviving
+Indians hid away in that one big chunk on top the mountain, and it&rsquo;s
+been waiting there ever since for me - and for you, if you want to go
+in on it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And here, by the Lagoon of the Palace of Fine Arts, ended my acquaintance
+with Julian Jones.&nbsp; On my agreeing to finance the adventure, he
+promised to call on me at my hotel next morning with the letters of
+Seth Manners and the railroad, and conclude arrangements.&nbsp; But
+he did not call.&nbsp; That evening I telephoned his hotel and was informed
+by the clerk that Mr. Julian Jones and wife had departed in the early
+afternoon, with their baggage.</p>
+<p>Can Mrs. Jones have rushed him back and hidden him away in Nebraska?&nbsp;
+I remember that as we said good-bye, there was that in her smile that
+recalled the vulpine complacency of Mona Lisa, the Wise.</p>
+<p>Kohala, Hawaii,<br /><i>May</i> 5, 1916.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>STORY: LIKE ARGUS OF THE ANCIENT TIMES</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It was the summer of 1897, and there was trouble in the Tarwater
+family.&nbsp; Grandfather Tarwater, after remaining properly subdued
+and crushed for a quiet decade, had broken out again.&nbsp; This time
+it was the Klondike fever.&nbsp; His first and one unvarying symptom
+of such attacks was song.&nbsp; One chant only he raised, though he
+remembered no more than the first stanza and but three lines of that.&nbsp;
+And the family knew his feet were itching and his brain was tingling
+with the old madness, when he lifted his hoarse-cracked voice, now falsetto-cracked,
+in:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Like Argus of the ancient times,<br />We leave this modern Greece,<br />Tum-tum,
+tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum,<br />To shear the Golden Fleece.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Ten years earlier he had lifted the chant, sung to the air of the
+&ldquo;Doxology,&rdquo; when afflicted with the fever to go gold-mining
+in Patagonia.&nbsp; The multitudinous family had sat upon him, but had
+had a hard time doing it.&nbsp; When all else had failed to shake his
+resolution, they had applied lawyers to him, with the threat of getting
+out guardianship papers and of confining him in the state asylum for
+the insane - which was reasonable for a man who had, a quarter of a
+century before, speculated away all but ten meagre acres of a California
+principality, and who had displayed no better business acumen ever since.</p>
+<p>The application of lawyers to John Tarwater was like the application
+of a mustard plaster.&nbsp; For, in his judgment, they were the gentry,
+more than any other, who had skinned him out of the broad Tarwater acres.&nbsp;
+So, at the time of his Patagonian fever, the very thought of so drastic
+a remedy was sufficient to cure him.&nbsp; He quickly demonstrated he
+was not crazy by shaking the fever from him and agreeing not to go to
+Patagonia.</p>
+<p>Next, he demonstrated how crazy he really was, by deeding over to
+his family, unsolicited, the ten acres on Tarwater Flat, the house,
+barn, outbuildings, and water-rights.&nbsp; Also did he turn over the
+eight hundred dollars in bank that was the long-saved salvage of his
+wrecked fortune.&nbsp; But for this the family found no cause for committal
+to the asylum, since such committal would necessarily invalidate what
+he had done.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Grandfather is sure peeved,&rdquo; said Mary, his oldest daughter,
+herself a grandmother, when her father quit smoking.</p>
+<p>All he had retained for himself was a span of old horses, a mountain
+buckboard, and his one room in the crowded house.&nbsp; Further, having
+affirmed that he would be beholden to none of them, he got the contract
+to carry the United States mail, twice a week, from Kelterville up over
+Tarwater Mountain to Old Almaden - which was a sporadically worked quick-silver
+mine in the upland cattle country.&nbsp; With his old horses it took
+all his time to make the two weekly round trips.&nbsp; And for ten years,
+rain or shine, he had never missed a trip.&nbsp; Nor had he failed once
+to pay his week&rsquo;s board into Mary&rsquo;s hand.&nbsp; This board
+he had insisted on, in the convalescence from his Patagonian fever,
+and he had paid it strictly, though he had given up tobacco in order
+to be able to do it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; he confided to the ruined water wheel of the old
+Tarwater Mill, which he had built from the standing timber and which
+had ground wheat for the first settlers.&nbsp; &ldquo;Huh!&nbsp; They&rsquo;ll
+never put me in the poor farm so long as I support myself.&nbsp; And
+without a penny to my name it ain&rsquo;t likely any lawyer fellows&rsquo;ll
+come snoopin&rsquo; around after me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And yet, precisely because of these highly rational acts, it was
+held that John Tarwater was mildly crazy!</p>
+<p>The first time he had lifted the chant of &ldquo;Like Argus of the
+Ancient Times,&rdquo; had been in 1849, when, twenty-two years&rsquo;
+of age, violently attacked by the Californian fever, he had sold two
+hundred and forty Michigan acres, forty of it cleared, for the price
+of four yoke of oxen, and a wagon, and had started across the Plains.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And we turned off at Fort Hall, where the Oregon emigration
+went north&rsquo;ard, and swung south for Californy,&rdquo; was his
+way of concluding the narrative of that arduous journey.&nbsp; &ldquo;And
+Bill Ping and me used to rope grizzlies out of the underbrush of Cache
+Slough in the Sacramento Valley.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Years of freighting and mining had followed, and, with a stake gleaned
+from the Merced placers, he satisfied the land-hunger of his race and
+time by settling in Sonoma County.</p>
+<p>During the ten years of carrying the mail across Tarwater Township,
+up Tarwater Valley, and over Tarwater Mountain, most all of which land
+had once been his, he had spent his time dreaming of winning back that
+land before he died.&nbsp; And now, his huge gaunt form more erect than
+it had been for years, with a glinting of blue fires in his small and
+close-set eyes, he was lifting his ancient chant again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There he goes now - listen to him,&rdquo; said William Tarwater.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nobody at home,&rdquo; laughed Harris Topping, day labourer,
+husband of Annie Tarwater, and father of her nine children.</p>
+<p>The kitchen door opened to admit the old man, returning from feeding
+his horses.&nbsp; The song had ceased from his lips; but Mary was irritable
+from a burnt hand and a grandchild whose stomach refused to digest properly
+diluted cows&rsquo; milk.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now there ain&rsquo;t no use you carryin&rsquo; on that way,
+father,&rdquo; she tackled him.&nbsp; &ldquo;The time&rsquo;s past for
+you to cut and run for a place like the Klondike, and singing won&rsquo;t
+buy you nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just the same,&rdquo; he answered quietly.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+bet I could go to that Klondike place and pick up enough gold to buy
+back the Tarwater lands.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Old fool!&rdquo; Annie contributed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t buy them back for less&rsquo;n three hundred
+thousand and then some,&rdquo; was William&rsquo;s effort at squelching
+him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then I could pick up three hundred thousand, and then some,
+if I was only there,&rdquo; the old man retorted placidly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank God you can&rsquo;t walk there, or you&rsquo;d be startin&rsquo;,
+I know,&rdquo; Mary cried.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ocean travel costs money.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I used to have money,&rdquo; her father said humbly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you ain&rsquo;t got any now - so forget it,&rdquo; William
+advised.&nbsp; &ldquo;Them times is past, like roping bear with Bill
+Ping.&nbsp; There ain&rsquo;t no more bear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just the same - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>But Mary cut him off.&nbsp; Seizing the day&rsquo;s paper from the
+kitchen table, she flourished it savagely under her aged progenitor&rsquo;s
+nose.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do those Klondikers say?&nbsp; There it is in cold print.&nbsp;
+Only the young and robust can stand the Klondike.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s worse
+than the north pole.&nbsp; And they&rsquo;ve left their dead a-plenty
+there themselves.&nbsp; Look at their pictures.&nbsp; You&rsquo;re forty
+years older &rsquo;n the oldest of them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>John Tarwater did look, but his eyes strayed to other photographs
+on the highly sensational front page.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And look at the photys of them nuggets they brought down,&rdquo;
+he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I know gold.&nbsp; Didn&rsquo;t I gopher twenty
+thousand outa the Merced?&nbsp; And wouldn&rsquo;t it a-ben a hundred
+thousand if that cloudburst hadn&rsquo;t busted my wing-dam?&nbsp; Now
+if I was only in the Klondike - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Crazy as a loon,&rdquo; William sneered in open aside to the
+rest.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A nice way to talk to your father,&rdquo; Old Man Tarwater
+censured mildly.&nbsp; &ldquo;My father&rsquo;d have walloped the tar
+out of me with a single-tree if I&rsquo;d spoke to him that way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you <i>are</i> crazy, father - &rdquo; William began.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Reckon you&rsquo;re right, son.&nbsp; And that&rsquo;s where
+my father wasn&rsquo;t crazy.&nbsp; He&rsquo;d a-done it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The old man&rsquo;s been reading some of them magazine articles
+about men who succeeded after forty,&rdquo; Annie jibed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And why not, daughter?&rdquo; he asked.&nbsp; &ldquo;And why
+can&rsquo;t a man succeed after he&rsquo;s seventy?&nbsp; I was only
+seventy this year.&nbsp; And mebbe I could succeed if only I could get
+to the Klondike - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Which you ain&rsquo;t going to get to,&rdquo; Mary shut him
+off.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, then,&rdquo; he sighed, &ldquo;seein&rsquo;s I ain&rsquo;t,
+I might just as well go to bed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He stood up, tall, gaunt, great-boned and gnarled, a splendid ruin
+of a man.&nbsp; His ragged hair and whiskers were not grey but snowy
+white, as were the tufts of hair that stood out on the backs of his
+huge bony fingers.&nbsp; He moved toward the door, opened it, sighed,
+and paused with a backward look.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just the same,&rdquo; he murmured plaintively, &ldquo;the
+bottoms of my feet is itching something terrible.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Long before the family stirred next morning, his horses fed and harnessed
+by lantern light, breakfast cooked and eaten by lamp fight, Old Man
+Tarwater was off and away down Tarwater Valley on the road to Kelterville.&nbsp;
+Two things were unusual about this usual trip which he had made a thousand
+and forty times since taking the mail contract.&nbsp; He did not drive
+to Kelterville, but turned off on the main road south to Santa Rosa.&nbsp;
+Even more remarkable than this was the paper-wrapped parcel between
+his feet.&nbsp; It contained his one decent black suit, which Mary had
+been long reluctant to see him wear any more, not because it was shabby,
+but because, as he guessed what was at the back of her mind, it was
+decent enough to bury him in.</p>
+<p>And at Santa Rosa, in a second-hand clothes shop, he sold the suit
+outright for two dollars and a half.&nbsp; From the same obliging shopman
+he received four dollars for the wedding ring of his long-dead wife.&nbsp;
+The span of horses and the wagon he disposed of for seventy-five dollars,
+although twenty-five was all he received down in cash.&nbsp; Chancing
+to meet Alton Granger on the street, to whom never before had he mentioned
+the ten dollars loaned him in &rsquo;74, he reminded Alton Granger of
+the little affair, and was promptly paid.&nbsp; Also, of all unbelievable
+men to be in funds, he so found the town drunkard for whom he had bought
+many a drink in the old and palmy days.&nbsp; And from him John Tarwater
+borrowed a dollar.&nbsp; Finally, he took the afternoon train to San
+Francisco.</p>
+<p>A dozen days later, carrying a half-empty canvas sack of blankets
+and old clothes, he landed on the beach of Dyea in the thick of the
+great Klondike Rush.&nbsp; The beach was screaming bedlam.&nbsp; Ten
+thousand tons of outfit lay heaped and scattered, and twice ten thousand
+men struggled with it and clamoured about it.&nbsp; Freight, by Indian-back,
+over Chilcoot to Lake Linderman, had jumped from sixteen to thirty cents
+a pound, which latter was a rate of six hundred dollars a ton.&nbsp;
+And the sub-arctic winter gloomed near at hand.&nbsp; All knew it, and
+all knew that of the twenty thousand of them very few would get across
+the passes, leaving the rest to winter and wait for the late spring
+thaw.</p>
+<p>Such the beach old John Tarwater stepped upon; and straight across
+the beach and up the trail toward Chilcoot he headed, cackling his ancient
+chant, a very Grandfather Argus himself, with no outfit worry in the
+world, for he did not possess any outfit.&nbsp; That night he slept
+on the flats, five miles above Dyea, at the head of canoe navigation.&nbsp;
+Here the Dyea River became a rushing mountain torrent, plunging out
+of a dark canyon from the glaciers that fed it far above.</p>
+<p>And here, early next morning, he beheld a little man weighing no
+more than a hundred, staggering along a foot-log under all of a hundred
+pounds of flour strapped on his back.&nbsp; Also, he beheld the little
+man stumble off the log and fall face-downward in a quiet eddy where
+the water was two feet deep and proceed quietly to drown.&nbsp; It was
+no desire of his to take death so easily, but the flour on his back
+weighed as much as he and would not let him up.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, old man,&rdquo; he said to Tarwater, when the latter
+had dragged him up into the air and ashore.</p>
+<p>While he unlaced his shoes and ran the water out, they had further
+talk.&nbsp; Next, he fished out a ten-dollar gold-piece and offered
+it to his rescuer.</p>
+<p>Old Tarwater shook his head and shivered, for the ice-water had wet
+him to his knees.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I reckon I wouldn&rsquo;t object to settin&rsquo; down
+to a friendly meal with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t had breakfast?&rdquo; the little man, who was
+past forty and who had said his name was Anson, queried with a glance
+frankly curious.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nary bite,&rdquo; John Tarwater answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s your outfit?&nbsp; Ahead?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nary outfit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Expect to buy your grub on the Inside?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nary a dollar to buy it with, friend.&nbsp; Which ain&rsquo;t
+so important as a warm bite of breakfast right now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In Anson&rsquo;s camp, a quarter of a mile on, Tarwater found a slender,
+red-whiskered young man of thirty cursing over a fire of wet willow
+wood.&nbsp; Introduced as Charles, he transferred his scowl and wrath
+to Tarwater, who, genially oblivious, devoted himself to the fire, took
+advantage of the chill morning breeze to create a draught which the
+other had left stupidly blocked by stones, and soon developed less smoke
+and more flame.&nbsp; The third member of the party, Bill Wilson, or
+Big Bill as they called him, came in with a hundred-and-forty-pound
+pack; and what Tarwater esteemed to be a very rotten breakfast was dished
+out by Charles.&nbsp; The mush was half cooked and mostly burnt, the
+bacon was charred carbon, and the coffee was unspeakable.</p>
+<p>Immediately the meal was wolfed down the three partners took their
+empty pack-straps and headed down trail to where the remainder of their
+outfit lay at the last camp a mile away.&nbsp; And old Tarwater became
+busy.&nbsp; He washed the dishes, foraged dry wood, mended a broken
+pack-strap, put an edge on the butcher-knife and camp-axe, and repacked
+the picks and shovels into a more carryable parcel.</p>
+<p>What had impressed him during the brief breakfast was the sort of
+awe in which Anson and Big Bill stood of Charles.&nbsp; Once, during
+the morning, while Anson took a breathing spell after bringing in another
+hundred-pound pack, Tarwater delicately hinted his impression.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You see, it&rsquo;s this way,&rdquo; Anson said.&nbsp; &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve
+divided our leadership.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ve got specialities.&nbsp; Now
+I&rsquo;m a carpenter.&nbsp; When we get to Lake Linderman, and the
+trees are chopped and whipsawed into planks, I&rsquo;ll boss the building
+of the boat.&nbsp; Big Bill is a logger and miner.&nbsp; So he&rsquo;ll
+boss getting out the logs and all mining operations.&nbsp; Most of our
+outfit&rsquo;s ahead.&nbsp; We went broke paying the Indians to pack
+that much of it to the top of Chilcoot.&nbsp; Our last partner is up
+there with it, moving it along by himself down the other side.&nbsp;
+His name&rsquo;s Liverpool, and he&rsquo;s a sailor.&nbsp; So, when
+the boat&rsquo;s built, he&rsquo;s the boss of the outfit to navigate
+the lakes and rapids to Klondike.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And Charles - this Mr. Crayton - what might his speciality
+be?&rdquo; Tarwater asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s the business man.&nbsp; When it comes to business
+and organization he&rsquo;s boss.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hum,&rdquo; Tarwater pondered.&nbsp; &ldquo;Very lucky to
+get such a bunch of specialities into one outfit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;More than luck,&rdquo; Anson agreed.&nbsp; &ldquo;It was all
+accident, too.&nbsp; Each of us started alone.&nbsp; We met on the steamer
+coming up from San Francisco, and formed the party. - Well, I got to
+be goin&rsquo;.&nbsp; Charles is liable to get kicking because I ain&rsquo;t
+packin&rsquo; my share&rsquo; just the same, you can&rsquo;t expect
+a hundred-pound man to pack as much as a hundred-and-sixty-pounder.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stick around and cook us something for dinner,&rdquo; Charles,
+on his next load in and noting the effects of the old man&rsquo;s handiness,
+told Tarwater.</p>
+<p>And Tarwater cooked a dinner that was a dinner, washed the dishes,
+had real pork and beans for supper, and bread baked in a frying-pan
+that was so delectable than the three partners nearly foundered themselves
+on it.&nbsp; Supper dishes washed, he cut shavings and kindling for
+a quick and certain breakfast fire, showed Anson a trick with foot-gear
+that was invaluable to any hiker, sang his &ldquo;Like Argus of the
+Ancient Times,&rdquo; and told them of the great emigration across the
+Plains in Forty-nine.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My goodness, the first cheerful and hearty-like camp since
+we hit the beach,&rdquo; Big Bill remarked as he knocked out his pipe
+and began pulling off his shoes for bed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Kind of made things easy, boys, eh?&rdquo;&nbsp; Tarwater
+queried genially.</p>
+<p>All nodded.&nbsp; &ldquo;Well, then, I got a proposition, boys.&nbsp;
+You can take it or leave it, but just listen kindly to it.&nbsp; You&rsquo;re
+in a hurry to get in before the freeze-up.&nbsp; Half the time is wasted
+over the cooking by one of you that he might be puttin&rsquo; in packin&rsquo;
+outfit.&nbsp; If I do the cookin&rsquo; for you, you all&rsquo;ll get
+on that much faster.&nbsp; Also, the cookin&rsquo; &rsquo;ll be better,
+and that&rsquo;ll make you pack better.&nbsp; And I can pack quite a
+bit myself in between times, quite a bit, yes, sir, quite a bit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Big Bill and Anson were just beginning to nod their heads in agreement,
+when Charles stopped them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you expect of us in return?&rdquo; he demanded of
+the old man.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I leave it up to the boys.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That ain&rsquo;t business,&rdquo; Charles reprimanded sharply.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You made the proposition.&nbsp; Now finish it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s this way - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You expect us to feed you all winter, eh?&rdquo; Charles interrupted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, siree, I don&rsquo;t.&nbsp; All I reckon is a passage
+to Klondike in your boat would be mighty square of you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t an ounce of grub, old man.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ll
+starve to death when you get there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been feedin&rsquo; some long time pretty successful,&rdquo;
+Old Tarwater replied, a whimsical light in his eyes.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+seventy, and ain&rsquo;t starved to death never yet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will you sign a paper to the effect that you shift for yourself
+as soon as you get to Dawson?&rdquo; the business one demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, sure,&rdquo; was the response.</p>
+<p>Again Charles checked his two partners&rsquo; expressions of satisfaction
+with the arrangement.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One other thing, old man.&nbsp; We&rsquo;re a party of four,
+and we all have a vote on questions like this.&nbsp; Young Liverpool
+is ahead with the main outfit.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s got a say so, and he
+isn&rsquo;t here to say it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What kind of a party might he be?&rdquo; Tarwater inquired.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a rough-neck sailor, and he&rsquo;s got a quick,
+bad temper.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some turbulent,&rdquo; Anson contributed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And the way he can cuss is simply God-awful,&rdquo; Big Bill
+testified.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But he&rsquo;s square,&rdquo; Big Bill added.</p>
+<p>Anson nodded heartily to this appraisal.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, boys,&rdquo; Tarwater summed up, &ldquo;I set out for
+Californy and I got there.&nbsp; And I&rsquo;m going to get to Klondike.&nbsp;
+Ain&rsquo;t a thing can stop me, ain&rsquo;t a thing.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m
+going to get three hundred thousand outa the ground, too.&nbsp; Ain&rsquo;t
+a thing can stop me, ain&rsquo;t a thing, because I just naturally need
+the money.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t mind a bad temper so long&rsquo;s the
+boy is square.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll take my chance, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll
+work along with you till we catch up with him.&nbsp; Then, if he says
+no to the proposition, I reckon I&rsquo;ll lose.&nbsp; But somehow I
+just can&rsquo;t see &rsquo;m sayin&rsquo; no, because that&rsquo;d
+mean too close up to freeze-up and too late for me to find another chance
+like this.&nbsp; And, as I&rsquo;m sure going to get to Klondike, it&rsquo;s
+just plumb impossible for him to say no.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Old John Tarwater became a striking figure on a trail unusually replete
+with striking figures.&nbsp; With thousands of men, each back-tripping
+half a ton of outfit, retracing every mile of the trail twenty times,
+all came to know him and to hail him as &ldquo;Father Christmas.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And, as he worked, ever he raised his chant with his age-falsetto voice.&nbsp;
+None of the three men he had joined could complain about his work.&nbsp;
+True, his joints were stiff - he admitted to a trifle of rheumatism.&nbsp;
+He moved slowly, and seemed to creak and crackle when he moved; but
+he kept on moving.&nbsp; Last into the blankets at night, he was first
+out in the morning, so that the other three had hot coffee before their
+one before-breakfast pack.&nbsp; And, between breakfast and dinner and
+between dinner and supper, he always managed to back-trip for several
+packs himself.&nbsp; Sixty pounds was the limit of his burden, however.&nbsp;
+He could manage seventy-five, but he could not keep it up.&nbsp; Once,
+he tried ninety, but collapsed on the trail and was seriously shaky
+for a couple of days afterward.</p>
+<p>Work!&nbsp; On a trail where hard-working men learned for the first
+time what work was, no man worked harder in proportion to his strength
+than Old Tarwater.&nbsp; Driven desperately on by the near-thrust of
+winter, and lured madly on by the dream of gold, they worked to their
+last ounce of strength and fell by the way.&nbsp; Others, when failure
+made certain, blew out their brains.&nbsp; Some went mad, and still
+others, under the irk of the man-destroying strain, broke partnerships
+and dissolved life-time friendships with fellows just as good as themselves
+and just as strained and mad.</p>
+<p>Work!&nbsp; Old Tarwater could shame them all, despite his creaking
+and crackling and the nasty hacking cough he had developed.&nbsp; Early
+and late, on trail or in camp beside the trail he was ever in evidence,
+ever busy at something, ever responsive to the hail of &ldquo;Father
+Christmas.&rdquo;&nbsp; Weary back-trippers would rest their packs on
+a log or rock alongside of where he rested his, and would say: &ldquo;Sing
+us that song of yourn, dad, about Forty-Nine.&rdquo;&nbsp; And, when
+he had wheezingly complied, they would arise under their loads, remark
+that it was real heartening, and hit the forward trail again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If ever a man worked his passage and earned it,&rdquo; Big
+Bill confided to his two partners, &ldquo;that man&rsquo;s our old Skeezicks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You bet,&rdquo; Anson confirmed.&nbsp; &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a
+valuable addition to the party, and I, for one, ain&rsquo;t at all disagreeable
+to the notion of making him a regular partner - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;None of that!&rdquo; Charles Crayton cut in.&nbsp; &ldquo;When
+we get to Dawson we&rsquo;re quit of him - that&rsquo;s the agreement.&nbsp;
+We&rsquo;d only have to bury him if we let him stay on with us.&nbsp;
+Besides, there&rsquo;s going to be a famine, and every ounce of grub&rsquo;ll
+count.&nbsp; Remember, we&rsquo;re feeding him out of our own supply
+all the way in.&nbsp; And if we run short in the pinch next year, you&rsquo;ll
+know the reason.&nbsp; Steamboats can&rsquo;t get up grub to Dawson
+till the middle of June, and that&rsquo;s nine months away.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you put as much money and outfit in as the rest of us,&rdquo;
+Big Bill conceded, &ldquo;and you&rsquo;ve a say according.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I&rsquo;m going to have my say,&rdquo; Charles asserted
+with increasing irritability.&nbsp; &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s lucky for
+you with your fool sentiments that you&rsquo;ve got somebody to think
+ahead for you, else you&rsquo;d all starve to death.&nbsp; I tell you
+that famine&rsquo;s coming.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve been studying the situation.&nbsp;
+Flour will be two dollars a pound, or ten, and no sellers.&nbsp; You
+mark my words.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Across the rubble-covered flats, up the dark canyon to Sheep Camp,
+past the over-hanging and ever-threatening glaciers to the Scales, and
+from the Scales up the steep pitches of ice-scoured rock where packers
+climbed with hands and feet, Old Tarwater camp-cooked and packed and
+sang.&nbsp; He blew across Chilcoot Pass, above timberline, in the first
+swirl of autumn snow.&nbsp; Those below, without firewood, on the bitter
+rim of Crater Lake, heard from the driving obscurity above them a weird
+voice chanting:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Like Argus of the ancient times,<br />We leave this modern
+Greece,<br />Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum,<br />To shear the
+Golden Fleece.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>And out of the snow flurries they saw appear a tall, gaunt form,
+with whiskers of flying white that blended with the storm, bending under
+a sixty-pound pack of camp dunnage.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Father Christmas!&rdquo; was the hail.&nbsp; And then: &ldquo;Three
+rousing cheers for Father Christmas!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Two miles beyond Crater Lake lay Happy Camp - so named because here
+was found the uppermost fringe of the timber line, where men might warm
+themselves by fire again.&nbsp; Scarcely could it be called timber,
+for it was a dwarf rock-spruce that never raised its loftiest branches
+higher than a foot above the moss, and that twisted and grovelled like
+a pig-vegetable under the moss.&nbsp; Here, on the trail leading into
+Happy Camp, in the first sunshine of half a dozen days, Old Tarwater
+rested his pack against a huge boulder and caught his breath.&nbsp;
+Around this boulder the trail passed, laden men toiling slowly forward
+and men with empty pack-straps limping rapidly back for fresh loads.&nbsp;
+Twice Old Tarwater essayed to rise and go on, and each time, warned
+by his shakiness, sank back to recover more strength.&nbsp; From around
+the boulder he heard voices in greeting, recognized Charles Crayton&rsquo;s
+voice, and realized that at last they had met up with Young Liverpool.&nbsp;
+Quickly, Charles plunged into business, and Tarwater heard with great
+distinctness every word of Charles&rsquo; unflattering description of
+him and the proposition to give him passage to Dawson.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A dam fool proposition,&rdquo; was Liverpool&rsquo;s judgment,
+when Charles had concluded.&nbsp; &ldquo;An old granddad of seventy!&nbsp;
+If he&rsquo;s on his last legs, why in hell did you hook up with him?&nbsp;
+If there&rsquo;s going to be a famine, and it looks like it, we need
+every ounce of grub for ourselves.&nbsp; We only out-fitted for four,
+not five.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; Tarwater heard Charles assuring
+the other.&nbsp; &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t get excited.&nbsp; The old codger
+agreed to leave the final decision to you when we caught up with you.&nbsp;
+All you&rsquo;ve got to do is put your foot down and say no.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean it&rsquo;s up to me to turn the old one down, after
+your encouraging him and taking advantage of his work clear from Dyea
+here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a hard trail, Liverpool, and only the men that
+are hard will get through,&rdquo; Charles strove to palliate.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I&rsquo;m to do the dirty work?&rdquo; Liverpool complained,
+while Tarwater&rsquo;s heart sank.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just about the size of it,&rdquo; Charles said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got the deciding.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then old Tarwater&rsquo;s heart uprose again as the air was rent
+by a cyclone of profanity, from the midst of which crackled sentences
+like: - &ldquo;Dirty skunks! . . . See you in hell first! . . . My mind&rsquo;s
+made up! . . . Hell&rsquo;s fire and corruption! . . . The old codger
+goes down the Yukon with us, stack on that, my hearty! . . . Hard?&nbsp;
+You don&rsquo;t know what hard is unless I show you! . . . I&rsquo;ll
+bust the whole outfit to hell and gone if any of you try to side-track
+him! . . . Just try to side-track him, that is all, and you&rsquo;ll
+think the Day of Judgment and all God&rsquo;s blastingness has hit the
+camp in one chunk!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such was the invigoratingness of Liverpool&rsquo;s flow of speech
+that, quite without consciousness of effort, the old man arose easily
+under his load and strode on toward Happy Camp.</p>
+<p>From Happy Camp to Long Lake, from Long Lake to Deep Lake, and from
+Deep Lake up over the enormous hog-back and down to Linderman, the man-killing
+race against winter kept on.&nbsp; Men broke their hearts and backs
+and wept beside the trail in sheer exhaustion.&nbsp; But winter never
+faltered.&nbsp; The fall gales blew, and amid bitter soaking rains and
+ever-increasing snow flurries, Tarwater and the party to which he was
+attached piled the last of their outfit on the beach.</p>
+<p>There was no rest.&nbsp; Across the lake, a mile above a roaring
+torrent, they located a patch of spruce and built their saw-pit.&nbsp;
+Here, by hand, with an inadequate whipsaw, they sawed the spruce-trunks
+into lumber.&nbsp; They worked night and day.&nbsp; Thrice, on the night-shift,
+underneath in the saw-pit, Old Tarwater fainted.&nbsp; By day he cooked
+as well, and, in the betweenwhiles, helped Anson in the building of
+the boat beside the torrent as the green planks came down.</p>
+<p>The days grew shorter.&nbsp; The wind shifted into the north and
+blew unending gales.&nbsp; In the mornings the weary men crawled from
+their blankets and in their socks thawed out their frozen shoes by the
+fire Tarwater always had burning for them.&nbsp; Ever arose the increasing
+tale of famine on the Inside.&nbsp; The last grub steamboats up from
+Bering Sea were stalled by low water at the beginning of the Yukon Flats
+hundreds of miles north of Dawson.&nbsp; In fact, they lay at the old
+Hudson Bay Company&rsquo;s post at Fort Yukon inside the Arctic Circle.&nbsp;
+Flour in Dawson was up to two dollars a pound, but no one would sell.&nbsp;
+Bonanza and Eldorado Kings, with money to burn, were leaving for the
+Outside because they could buy no grub.&nbsp; Miners&rsquo; Committees
+were confiscating all grub and putting the population on strict rations.&nbsp;
+A man who held out an ounce of grub was shot like a dog.&nbsp; A score
+had been so executed already.</p>
+<p>And, under a strain which had broken so many younger men, Old Tarwater
+began to break.&nbsp; His cough had become terrible, and had not his
+exhausted comrades slept like the dead, he would have kept them awake
+nights.&nbsp; Also, he began to take chills, so that he dressed up to
+go to bed.&nbsp; When he had finished so dressing, not a rag of garment
+remained in his clothes bag.&nbsp; All he possessed was on his back
+and swathed around his gaunt old form.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gee!&rdquo; said Big Bill.&nbsp; &ldquo;If he puts all he&rsquo;s
+got on now, when it ain&rsquo;t lower than twenty above, what&rsquo;ll
+he do later on when it goes down to fifty and sixty below?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They lined the rough-made boat down the mountain torrent, nearly
+losing it a dozen times, and rowed across the south end of Lake Linderman
+in the thick of a fall blizzard.&nbsp; Next morning they planned to
+load and start, squarely into the teeth of the north, on their perilous
+traverse of half a thousand miles of lakes and rapids and box canyons.&nbsp;
+But before he went to bed that night, Young Liverpool was out over the
+camp.&nbsp; He returned to find his whole party asleep.&nbsp; Rousing
+Tarwater, he talked with him in low tones.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Listen, dad,&rdquo; he said. - &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got a passage
+in our boat, and if ever a man earned a passage you have.&nbsp; But
+you know yourself you&rsquo;re pretty well along in years, and your
+health right now ain&rsquo;t exciting.&nbsp; If you go on with us you&rsquo;ll
+croak surer&rsquo;n hell. - Now wait till I finish, dad.&nbsp; The price
+for a passage has jumped to five hundred dollars.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve been
+throwing my feet and I&rsquo;ve hustled a passenger.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s
+an official of the Alaska Commercial and just has to get in.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s
+bid up to six hundred to go with me in our boat.&nbsp; Now the passage
+is yours.&nbsp; You sell it to him, poke the six hundred into your jeans,
+and pull South for California while the goin&rsquo;s good.&nbsp; You
+can be in Dyea in two days, and in California in a week more.&nbsp;
+What d&rsquo;ye say?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Tarwater coughed and shivered for a space, ere he could get freedom
+of breath for speech.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Son,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I just want to tell you one thing.&nbsp;
+I drove my four yoke of oxen across the Plains in Forty-nine and lost
+nary a one.&nbsp; I drove them plumb to Californy, and I freighted with
+them afterward out of Sutter&rsquo;s Fort to American Bar.&nbsp; Now
+I&rsquo;m going to Klondike.&nbsp; Ain&rsquo;t nothing can stop me,
+ain&rsquo;t nothing at all.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m going to ride that boat,
+with you at the steering sweep, clean to Klondike, and I&rsquo;m going
+to shake three hundred thousand out of the moss-roots.&nbsp; That being
+so, it&rsquo;s contrary to reason and common sense for me to sell out
+my passage.&nbsp; But I thank you kindly, son, I thank you kindly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The young sailor shot out his hand impulsively and gripped the old
+man&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By God, dad!&rdquo; he cried.&nbsp; &ldquo;You&rsquo;re sure
+going to go then.&nbsp; You&rsquo;re the real stuff.&rdquo;&nbsp; He
+looked with undisguised contempt across the sleepers to where Charles
+Crayton snored in his red beard.&nbsp; &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t seem
+to make your kind any more, dad.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Into the north they fought their way, although old-timers, coming
+out, shook their heads and prophesied they would be frozen in on the
+lakes.&nbsp; That the freeze-up might come any day was patent, and delays
+of safety were no longer considered.&nbsp; For this reason, Liverpool
+decided to shoot the rapid stream connecting Linderman to Lake Bennett
+with the fully loaded boat.&nbsp; It was the custom to line the empty
+boats down and to portage the cargoes across.&nbsp; Even then many empty
+boats had been wrecked.&nbsp; But the time was past for such precaution.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Climb out, dad,&rdquo; Liverpool commanded as he prepared
+to swing from the bank and enter the rapids.</p>
+<p>Old Tarwater shook his white head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sticking to the outfit,&rdquo; he declared.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the only way to get through.&nbsp; You see, son, I&rsquo;m
+going to Klondike.&nbsp; If I stick by the boat, then the boat just
+naturally goes to Klondike, too.&nbsp; If I get out, then most likely
+you&rsquo;ll lose the boat.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s no use in overloading,&rdquo; Charles
+announced, springing abruptly out on the bank as the boat cast off.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Next time you wait for my orders!&rdquo; Liverpool shouted
+ashore as the current gripped the boat.&nbsp; &ldquo;And there won&rsquo;t
+be any more walking around rapids and losing time waiting to pick you
+up!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>What took them ten minutes by river, took Charles half an hour by
+land, and while they waited for him at the head of Lake Bennett they
+passed the time of day with several dilapidated old-timers on their
+way out.&nbsp; The famine news was graver than ever.&nbsp; The North-west
+Mounted Police, stationed at the foot of Lake Marsh where the gold-rushers
+entered Canadian territory, were refusing to let a man past who did
+not carry with him seven hundred pounds of grub.&nbsp; In Dawson City
+a thousand men, with dog-teams, were waiting the freeze-up to come out
+over the ice.&nbsp; The trading companies could not fill their grub-contracts,
+and partners were cutting the cards to see which should go and which
+should stay and work the claims.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That settles it,&rdquo; Charles announced, when he learned
+of the action of the mounted police on the boundary.&nbsp; &ldquo;Old
+Man, you might as well start back now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Climb aboard!&rdquo;&nbsp; Liverpool commanded.&nbsp; &ldquo;We&rsquo;re
+going to Klondike, and old dad is going along.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A shift of gale to the south gave them a fair wind down Lake Bennett,
+before which they ran under a huge sail made by Liverpool.&nbsp; The
+heavy weight of outfit gave such ballast that he cracked on as a daring
+sailor should when moments counted.&nbsp; A shift of four points into
+the south-west, coming just at the right time as they entered upon Caribou
+Crossing, drove them down that connecting link to lakes Tagish and Marsh.&nbsp;
+In stormy sunset and twilight - they made the dangerous crossing of
+Great Windy Arm, wherein they beheld two other boat-loads of gold-rushers
+capsize and drown.</p>
+<p>Charles was for beaching for the night, but Liverpool held on, steering
+down Tagish by the sound of the surf on the shoals and by the occasional
+shore-fires that advertised wrecked or timid argonauts.&nbsp; At four
+in the morning, he aroused Charles.&nbsp; Old Tarwater, shiveringly
+awake, heard Liverpool order Crayton aft beside him at the steering-sweep,
+and also heard the one-sided conversation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just listen, friend Charles, and keep your own mouth shut,&rdquo;
+Liverpool began.&nbsp; &ldquo;I want you to get one thing into your
+head and keep it there: <i>old dad&rsquo;s going</i> <i>by the police.&nbsp;
+Understand? He&rsquo;s going</i> <i>by</i>.&nbsp; When they examine
+our outfit, old dad&rsquo;s got a fifth share in it, savvee?&nbsp; That&rsquo;ll
+put us all &rsquo;way under what we ought to have, but we can bluff
+it through.&nbsp; Now get this, and get it hard: <i>there</i> <i>ain&rsquo;t
+going to be any fall-down on this</i> <i>bluff</i> - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you think I&rsquo;d give away on the old codger - &rdquo;
+Charles began indignantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You thought that,&rdquo; Liverpool checked him, &ldquo;because
+I never mentioned any such thing.&nbsp; Now - get me and get me hard:
+I don&rsquo;t care what you&rsquo;ve been thinking.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s
+what you&rsquo;re going to think.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ll make the police
+post some time this afternoon, and we&rsquo;ve got to get ready to pull
+the bluff without a hitch, and a word to the wise is plenty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you think I&rsquo;ve got it in my mind - &rdquo; Charles
+began again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; Liverpool shut him off.&nbsp; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+know what&rsquo;s in your mind.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t want to know.&nbsp;
+I want you to know what&rsquo;s in my mind.&nbsp; If there&rsquo;s any
+slip-up, if old dad gets turned back by the police, I&rsquo;m going
+to pick out the first quiet bit of landscape and take you ashore on
+it.&nbsp; And then I&rsquo;m going to beat you up to the Queen&rsquo;s
+taste.&nbsp; Get me, and get me hard.&nbsp; It ain&rsquo;t going to
+be any half-way beating, but a real, two-legged, two-fisted, he-man
+beating.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t expect I&rsquo;ll kill you, but I&rsquo;ll
+come damn near to half-killing you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what can I do?&rdquo; Charles almost whimpered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just one thing,&rdquo; was Liverpool&rsquo;s final word.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You just pray.&nbsp; You pray so hard that old dad gets by the
+police that he does get by.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s all.&nbsp; Go back to
+your blankets.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Before they gained Lake Le Barge, the land was sheeted with snow
+that would not melt for half a year.&nbsp; Nor could they lay their
+boat at will against the bank, for the rim-ice was already forming.&nbsp;
+Inside the mouth of the river, just ere it entered Lake Le Barge, they
+found a hundred storm-bound boats of the argonauts.&nbsp; Out of the
+north, across the full sweep of the great lake, blew an unending snow
+gale.&nbsp; Three mornings they put out and fought it and the cresting
+seas it drove that turned to ice as they fell in-board.&nbsp; While
+the others broke their hearts at the oars, Old Tarwater managed to keep
+up just sufficient circulation to survive by chopping ice and throwing
+it overboard.</p>
+<p>Each day for three days, beaten to helplessness, they turned tail
+on the battle and ran back into the sheltering river.&nbsp; By the fourth
+day, the hundred boats had increased to three hundred, and the two thousand
+argonauts on board knew that the great gale heralded the freeze-up of
+Le Barge.&nbsp; Beyond, the rapid rivers would continue to run for days,
+but unless they got beyond, and immediately, they were doomed to be
+frozen in for six months to come.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This day we go through,&rdquo; Liverpool announced.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;We turn back for nothing.&nbsp; And those of us that dies at
+the oars will live again and go on pulling.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And they went through, winning half the length of the lake by nightfall
+and pulling on through all the night hours as the wind went down, falling
+asleep at the oars and being rapped awake by Liverpool, toiling on through
+an age-long nightmare while the stars came out and the surface of the
+lake turned to the unruffledness of a sheet of paper and froze skin-ice
+that tinkled like broken glass as their oar-blades shattered it.</p>
+<p>As day broke clear and cold, they entered the river, with behind
+them a sea of ice.&nbsp; Liverpool examined his aged passenger and found
+him helpless and almost gone.&nbsp; When he rounded the boat to against
+the rim-ice to build a fire and warm up Tarwater inside and out, Charles
+protested against such loss of time.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This ain&rsquo;t business, so don&rsquo;t you come horning
+in,&rdquo; Liverpool informed him.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m running the
+boat trip.&nbsp; So you just climb out and chop firewood, and plenty
+of it.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll take care of dad.&nbsp; You, Anson, make a fire
+on the bank.&nbsp; And you, Bill, set up the Yukon stove in the boat.&nbsp;
+Old dad ain&rsquo;t as young as the rest of us, and for the rest of
+this voyage he&rsquo;s going to have a fire on board to sit by.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>All of which came to pass; and the boat, in the grip of the current,
+like a river steamer with smoke rising from the two joints of stove-pipe,
+grounded on shoals, hung up on split currents, and charged rapids and
+canyons, as it drove deeper into the Northland winter.&nbsp; The Big
+and Little Salmon rivers were throwing mush-ice into the main river
+as they passed, and, below the riffles, anchor-ice arose from the river
+bottom and coated the surface with crystal scum.&nbsp; Night and day
+the rim-ice grew, till, in quiet places, it extended out a hundred yards
+from shore.&nbsp; And Old Tarwater, with all his clothes on, sat by
+the stove and kept the fire going.&nbsp; Night and day, not daring to
+stop for fear of the imminent freeze-up, they dared to run, an increasing
+mushiness of ice running with them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What ho, old hearty?&rdquo; Liverpool would call out at times.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cheer O,&rdquo; Old Tarwater had learned to respond.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What can I ever do for you, son, in payment?&rdquo; Tarwater,
+stoking the fire, would sometimes ask Liverpool, beating now one released
+hand and now the other as he fought for circulation where he steered
+in the freezing stern-sheets.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just break out that regular song of yours, old Forty-Niner,&rdquo;
+was the invariable reply.</p>
+<p>And Tarwater would lift his voice in the cackling chant, as he lifted
+it at the end, when the boat swung in through driving cake-ice and moored
+to the Dawson City bank, and all waterfront Dawson pricked its ears
+to hear the triumphant paean:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Like Argus of the ancient times,<br />We leave this modern Greece,<br />Tum-tum,
+tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum,<br />To shear the Golden Fleece,</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Charles did it, but he did it so discreetly that none of his party,
+least of all the sailor, ever learned of it.&nbsp; He saw two great
+open barges being filled up with men, and, on inquiry, learned that
+these were grubless ones being rounded up and sent down the Yukon by
+the Committee of Safety.&nbsp; The barges were to be towed by the last
+little steamboat in Dawson, and the hope was that Fort Yukon, where
+lay the stranded steamboats, would be gained before the river froze.&nbsp;
+At any rate, no matter what happened to them, Dawson would be relieved
+of their grub-consuming presence.&nbsp; So to the Committee of Safety
+Charles went, privily to drop a flea in its ear concerning Tarwater&rsquo;s
+grubless, moneyless, and aged condition.&nbsp; Tarwater was one of the
+last gathered in, and when Young Liverpool returned to the boat, from
+the bank he saw the barges in a run of cake-ice, disappearing around
+the bend below Moose-hide Mountain.</p>
+<p>Running in cake-ice all the way, and several times escaping jams
+in the Yukon Flats, the barges made their hundreds of miles of progress
+farther into the north and froze up cheek by jowl with the grub-fleet.&nbsp;
+Here, inside the Arctic Circle, Old Tarwater settled down to pass the
+long winter.&nbsp; Several hours&rsquo; work a day, chopping firewood
+for the steamboat companies, sufficed to keep him in food.&nbsp; For
+the rest of the time there was nothing to do but hibernate in his log
+cabin.</p>
+<p>Warmth, rest, and plenty to eat, cured his hacking cough and put
+him in as good physical condition as was possible for his advanced years.&nbsp;
+But, even before Christmas, the lack of fresh vegetables caused scurvy
+to break out, and disappointed adventurer after disappointed adventurer
+took to his bunk in abject surrender to this culminating misfortune.&nbsp;
+Not so Tarwater.&nbsp; Even before the first symptoms appeared on him,
+he was putting into practice his one prescription, namely, exercise.&nbsp;
+From the junk of the old trading post he resurrected a number of rusty
+traps, and from one of the steamboat captains he borrowed a rifle.</p>
+<p>Thus equipped, he ceased from wood-chopping, and began to make more
+than a mere living.&nbsp; Nor was he downhearted when the scurvy broke
+out on his own body.&nbsp; Ever he ran his trap-lines and sang his ancient
+chant.&nbsp; Nor could the pessimist shake his surety of the three hundred
+thousand of Alaskan gold he as going to shake out of the moss-roots.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But this ain&rsquo;t gold-country,&rdquo; they told him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gold is where you find it, son, as I should know who was mining
+before you was born, &rsquo;way back in Forty-Nine,&rdquo; was his reply.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What was Bonanza Creek but a moose-pasture?&nbsp; No miner&rsquo;d
+look at it; yet they washed five-hundred-dollar pans and took out fifty
+million dollars.&nbsp; Eldorado was just as bad.&nbsp; For all you know,
+right under this here cabin, or right over the next hill, is millions
+just waiting for a lucky one like me to come and shake it out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At the end of January came his disaster.&nbsp; Some powerful animal
+that he decided was a bob-cat, managing to get caught in one of his
+smaller traps, dragged it away.&nbsp; A heavy snow-fall put a stop midway
+to his pursuit, losing the trail for him and losing himself.&nbsp; There
+were but several hours of daylight each day between the twenty hours
+of intervening darkness, and his efforts in the grey light and continually
+falling snow succeeded only in losing him more thoroughly.&nbsp; Fortunately,
+when winter snow falls in the Northland the thermometer invariably rises;
+so, instead of the customary forty and fifty and even sixty degrees
+below zero, the temperature remained fifteen below.&nbsp; Also, he was
+warmly clad and had a full matchbox.&nbsp; Further to mitigate his predicament,
+on the fifth day he killed a wounded moose that weighed over half a
+ton.&nbsp; Making his camp beside it on a spruce-bottom, he was prepared
+to last out the winter, unless a searching party found him or his scurvy
+grew worse.</p>
+<p>But at the end of two weeks there had been no sign of search, while
+his scurvy had undeniably grown worse.&nbsp; Against his fire, banked
+from outer cold by a shelter-wall of spruce-boughs, he crouched long
+hours in sleep and long hours in waking.&nbsp; But the waking hours
+grew less, becoming semi-waking or half-dreaming hours as the process
+of hibernation worked their way with him.&nbsp; Slowly the sparkle point
+of consciousness and identity that was John Tarwater sank, deeper and
+deeper, into the profounds of his being that had been compounded ere
+man was man, and while he was becoming man, when he, first of all animals,
+regarded himself with an introspective eye and laid the beginnings of
+morality in foundations of nightmare peopled by the monsters of his
+own ethic-thwarted desires.</p>
+<p>Like a man in fever, waking to intervals of consciousness, so Old
+Tarwater awoke, cooked his moose-meat, and fed the fire; but more and
+more time he spent in his torpor, unaware of what was day-dream and
+what was sleep-dream in the content of his unconsciousness.&nbsp; And
+here, in the unforgetable crypts of man&rsquo;s unwritten history, unthinkable
+and unrealizable, like passages of nightmare or impossible adventures
+of lunacy, he encountered the monsters created of man&rsquo;s first
+morality that ever since have vexed him into the spinning of fantasies
+to elude them or do battle with them.</p>
+<p>In short, weighted by his seventy years, in the vast and silent loneliness
+of the North, Old Tarwater, as in the delirium of drug or anaesthetic,
+recovered within himself, the infantile mind of the child-man of the
+early world.&nbsp; It was in the dusk of Death&rsquo;s fluttery wings
+that Tarwater thus crouched, and, like his remote forebear, the child-man,
+went to myth-making, and sun-heroizing, himself hero-maker and the hero
+in quest of the immemorable treasure difficult of attainment.</p>
+<p>Either must he attain the treasure - for so ran the inexorable logic
+of the shadow-land of the unconscious - or else sink into the all-devouring
+sea, the blackness eater of the light that swallowed to extinction the
+sun each night . . . the sun that arose ever in rebirth next morning
+in the east, and that had become to man man&rsquo;s first symbol of
+immortality through rebirth.&nbsp; All this, in the deeps of his unconsciousness
+(the shadowy western land of descending light), was the near dusk of
+Death down into which he slowly ebbed.</p>
+<p>But how to escape this monster of the dark that from within him slowly
+swallowed him?&nbsp; Too deep-sunk was he to dream of escape or feel
+the prod of desire to escape.&nbsp; For him reality had ceased.&nbsp;
+Nor from within the darkened chamber of himself could reality recrudesce.&nbsp;
+His years were too heavy upon him, the debility of disease and the lethargy
+and torpor of the silence and the cold were too profound.&nbsp; Only
+from without could reality impact upon him and reawake within him an
+awareness of reality.&nbsp; Otherwise he would ooze down through the
+shadow-realm of the unconscious into the all-darkness of extinction.</p>
+<p>But it came, the smash of reality from without, crashing upon his
+ear drums in a loud, explosive snort.&nbsp; For twenty days, in a temperature
+that had never risen above fifty below, no breath of wind had blown
+movement, no slightest sound had broken the silence.&nbsp; Like the
+smoker on the opium couch refocusing his eyes from the spacious walls
+of dream to the narrow confines of the mean little room, so Old Tarwater
+stared vague-eyed before him across his dying fire, at a huge moose
+that stared at him in startlement, dragging a wounded leg, manifesting
+all signs of extreme exhaustion; it, too, had been straying blindly
+in the shadow-land, and had wakened to reality only just ere it stepped
+into Tarwater&rsquo;s fire.</p>
+<p>He feebly slipped the large fur mitten lined with thickness of wool
+from his right hand.&nbsp; Upon trial he found the trigger finger too
+numb for movement.&nbsp; Carefully, slowly, through long minutes, he
+worked the bare hand inside his blankets, up under his fur <i>parka</i>,
+through the chest openings of his shirts, and into the slightly warm
+hollow of his left arm-pit.&nbsp; Long minutes passed ere the finger
+could move, when, with equal slowness of caution, he gathered his rifle
+to his shoulder and drew bead upon the great animal across the fire.</p>
+<p>At the shot, of the two shadow-wanderers, the one reeled downward
+to the dark and the other reeled upward to the light, swaying drunkenly
+on his scurvy-ravaged legs, shivering with nervousness and cold, rubbing
+swimming eyes with shaking fingers, and staring at the real world all
+about him that had returned to him with such sickening suddenness.&nbsp;
+He shook himself together, and realized that for long, how long he did
+not know, he had bedded in the arms of Death.&nbsp; He spat, with definite
+intention, heard the spittle crackle in the frost, and judged it must
+be below and far below sixty below.&nbsp; In truth, that day at Fort
+Yukon, the spirit thermometer registered seventy-five degrees below
+zero, which, since freezing-point is thirty-two above, was equivalent
+to one hundred and seven degrees of frost.</p>
+<p>Slowly Tarwater&rsquo;s brain reasoned to action.&nbsp; Here, in
+the vast alone, dwelt Death.&nbsp; Here had come two wounded moose.&nbsp;
+With the clearing of the sky after the great cold came on, he had located
+his bearings, and he knew that both wounded moose had trailed to him
+from the east.&nbsp; Therefore, in the east, were men - whites or Indians
+he could not tell, but at any rate men who might stand by him in his
+need and help moor him to reality above the sea of dark.</p>
+<p>He moved slowly, but he moved in reality, girding himself with rifle,
+ammunition, matches, and a pack of twenty pounds of moose-meat.&nbsp;
+Then, an Argus rejuvenated, albeit lame of both legs and tottery, he
+turned his back on the perilous west and limped into the sun-arising,
+re-birthing east. . . .</p>
+<p>Days later - how many days later he was never to know - dreaming
+dreams and seeing visions, cackling his old gold-chant of Forty-Nine,
+like one drowning and swimming feebly to keep his consciousness above
+the engulfing dark, he came out upon the snow-slope to a canyon and
+saw below smoke rising and men who ceased from work to gaze at him.&nbsp;
+He tottered down the hill to them, still singing; and when he ceased
+from lack of breath they called him variously: Santa Claus, Old Christmas,
+Whiskers, the Last of the Mohicans, and Father Christmas.&nbsp; And
+when he stood among them he stood very still, without speech, while
+great tears welled out of his eyes.&nbsp; He cried silently, a long
+time, till, as if suddenly bethinking himself, he sat down in the snow
+with much creaking and crackling of his joints, and from this low vantage
+point toppled sidewise and fainted calmly and easily away.</p>
+<p>In less than a week Old Tarwater was up and limping about the housework
+of the cabin, cooking and dish-washing for the five men of the creek.&nbsp;
+Genuine sourdoughs (pioneers) they were, tough and hard-bitten, who
+had been buried so deeply inside the Circle that they did not know there
+was a Klondike Strike.&nbsp; The news he brought them was their first
+word of it.&nbsp; They lived on an almost straight-meat diet of moose,
+caribou, and smoked salmon, eked out with wild berries and somewhat
+succulent wild roots they had stocked up with in the summer.&nbsp; They
+had forgotten the taste of coffee, made fire with a burning glass, carried
+live fire-sticks with them wherever they travelled, and in their pipes
+smoked dry leaves that bit the tongue and were pungent to the nostrils.</p>
+<p>Three years before, they had prospected from the head-reaches of
+the Koyokuk northward and clear across to the mouth of the Mackenzie
+on the Arctic Ocean.&nbsp; Here, on the whaleships, they had beheld
+their last white men and equipped themselves with the last white man&rsquo;s
+grub, consisting principally of salt and smoking tobacco.&nbsp; Striking
+south and west on the long traverse to the junction of the Yukon and
+Porcupine at Fort Yukon, they had found gold on this creek and remained
+over to work the ground.</p>
+<p>They hailed the advent of Tarwater with joy, never tired of listening
+to his tales of Forty-Nine, and rechristened him Old Hero.&nbsp; Also,
+with tea made from spruce needles, with concoctions brewed from the
+inner willow bark, and with sour and bitter roots and bulbs from the
+ground, they dosed his scurvy out of him, so that he ceased limping
+and began to lay on flesh over his bony framework.&nbsp; Further, they
+saw no reason at all why he should not gather a rich treasure of gold
+from the ground.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know about all of three hundred thousand,&rdquo;
+they told him one morning, at breakfast, ere they departed to their
+work, &ldquo;but how&rsquo;d a hundred thousand do, Old Hero?&nbsp;
+That&rsquo;s what we figure a claim is worth, the ground being badly
+spotted, and we&rsquo;ve already staked your location notices.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, boys,&rdquo; Old Tarwater answered, &ldquo;and thanking
+you kindly, all I can say is that a hundred thousand will do nicely,
+and very nicely, for a starter.&nbsp; Of course, I ain&rsquo;t goin&rsquo;
+to stop till I get the full three hundred thousand.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s
+what I come into the country for.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They laughed and applauded his ambition and reckoned they&rsquo;d
+have to hunt a richer creek for him.&nbsp; And Old Hero reckoned that
+as the spring came on and he grew spryer, he&rsquo;d have to get out
+and do a little snooping around himself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For all anybody knows,&rdquo; he said, pointing to a hillside
+across the creek bottom, &ldquo;the moss under the snow there may be
+plumb rooted in nugget gold.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He said no more, but as the sun rose higher and the days grew longer
+and warmer, he gazed often across the creek at the definite bench-formation
+half way up the hill.&nbsp; And, one day, when the thaw was in full
+swing, he crossed the stream and climbed to the bench.&nbsp; Exposed
+patches of ground had already thawed an inch deep.&nbsp; On one such
+patch he stopped, gathered a bunch of moss in his big gnarled hands,
+and ripped it out by the roots.&nbsp; The sun smouldered on dully glistening
+yellow.&nbsp; He shook the handful of moss, and coarse nuggets, like
+gravel, fell to the ground.&nbsp; It was the Golden Fleece ready for
+the shearing.</p>
+<p>Not entirely unremembered in Alaskan annals is the summer stampede
+of 1898 from Fort Yukon to the bench diggings of Tarwater Hill.&nbsp;
+And when Tarwater sold his holdings to the Bowdie interests for a sheer
+half-million and faced for California, he rode a mule over a new-cut
+trail, with convenient road houses along the way, clear to the steamboat
+landing at Fort Yukon.</p>
+<p>At the first meal on the ocean-going steamship out of St. Michaels,
+a waiter, greyish-haired, pain-ravaged of face, scurvy-twisted of body,
+served him.&nbsp; Old Tarwater was compelled to look him over twice
+in order to make certain he was Charles Crayton.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Got it bad, eh, son?&rdquo; Tarwater queried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just my luck,&rdquo; the other complained, after recognition
+and greeting.&nbsp; &ldquo;Only one of the party that the scurvy attacked.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;ve been through hell.&nbsp; The other three are all at work
+and healthy, getting grub-stake to prospect up White River this winter.&nbsp;
+Anson&rsquo;s earning twenty-five a day at carpentering, Liverpool getting
+twenty logging for the saw-mill, and Big Bill&rsquo;s getting forty
+a day as chief sawyer.&nbsp; I tried my best, and if it hadn&rsquo;t
+been for scurvy . . .&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure, son, you done your best, which ain&rsquo;t much, you
+being naturally irritable and hard from too much business.&nbsp; Now
+I&rsquo;ll tell you what.&nbsp; You ain&rsquo;t fit to work crippled
+up this way.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll pay your passage with the captain in kind
+remembrance of the voyage you gave me, and you can lay up and take it
+easy the rest of the trip.&nbsp; And what are your circumstances when
+you land at San Francisco?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Charles Crayton shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell you what,&rdquo; Tarwater continued.&nbsp; &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+work on the ranch for you till you can start business again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I could manage your business for you - &rdquo; Charles began
+eagerly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, siree,&rdquo; Tarwater declared emphatically.&nbsp; &ldquo;But
+there&rsquo;s always post-holes to dig, and cordwood to chop, and the
+climate&rsquo;s fine . . . &rdquo;</p>
+<p>Tarwater arrived home a true prodigal grandfather for whom the fatted
+calf was killed and ready.&nbsp; But first, ere he sat down at table,
+he must stroll out and around.&nbsp; And sons and daughters of his flesh
+and of the law needs must go with him fulsomely eating out of the gnarled
+old hand that had half a million to disburse.&nbsp; He led the way,
+and no opinion he slyly uttered was preposterous or impossible enough
+to draw dissent from his following.&nbsp; Pausing by the ruined water
+wheel which he had built from the standing timber, his face beamed as
+he gazed across the stretches of Tarwater Valley, and on and up the
+far heights to the summit of Tarwater Mountain - now all his again.</p>
+<p>A thought came to him that made him avert his face and blow his nose
+in order to hide the twinkle in his eyes.&nbsp; Still attended by the
+entire family, he strolled on to the dilapidated barn.&nbsp; He picked
+up an age-weathered single-tree from the ground.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;William,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Remember that little
+conversation we had just before I started to Klondike?&nbsp; Sure, William,
+you remember.&nbsp; You told me I was crazy.&nbsp; And I said my father&rsquo;d
+have walloped the tar out of me with a single-tree if I&rsquo;d spoke
+to him that way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Aw, but that was only foolin&rsquo;,&rdquo; William temporized.</p>
+<p>William was a grizzled man of forty-five, and his wife and grown
+sons stood in the group, curiously watching Grandfather Tarwater take
+off his coat and hand it to Mary to hold.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;William - come here,&rdquo; he commanded imperatively.</p>
+<p>No matter how reluctantly, William came.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just a taste, William, son, of what my father give me often
+enough,&rdquo; Old Tarwater crooned, as he laid on his son&rsquo;s back
+and shoulders with the single-tree.&nbsp; &ldquo;Observe, I ain&rsquo;t
+hitting you on the head.&nbsp; My father had a gosh-wollickin&rsquo;
+temper and never drew the line at heads when he went after tar. - Don&rsquo;t
+jerk your elbows back that way!&nbsp; You&rsquo;re likely to get a crack
+on one by accident.&nbsp; And just tell me one thing, William, son:
+is there nary notion in your head that I&rsquo;m crazy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No!&rdquo; William yelped out in pain, as he danced about.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You ain&rsquo;t crazy, father of course you ain&rsquo;t crazy!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You said it,&rdquo; Old Tarwater remarked sententiously, tossing
+the single-tree aside and starting to struggle into his coat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now let&rsquo;s all go in and eat.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Glen Ellen, California,<br /><i>September</i> 14, 1916.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>STORY: THE PRINCESS</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>A fire burned cheerfully in the jungle camp, and beside the fire
+lolled a cheerful-seeming though horrible-appearing man.&nbsp; This
+was a hobo jungle, pitched in a thin strip of woods that lay between
+a railroad embankment and the bank of a river.&nbsp; But no hobo was
+the man.&nbsp; So deep-sunk was he in the social abyss that a proper
+hobo would not sit by the same fire with him.&nbsp; A gay-cat, who is
+an ignorant new-comer on the &ldquo;Road,&rdquo; might sit with such
+as he, but only long enough to learn better.&nbsp; Even low down bindle-stiffs
+and stew-bums, after a once-over, would have passed this man by.&nbsp;
+A genuine hobo, a couple of punks, or a bunch of tender-yeared road-kids
+might have gone through his rags for any stray pennies or nickels and
+kicked him out into the darkness.&nbsp; Even an alki-stiff would have
+reckoned himself immeasurably superior.</p>
+<p>For this man was that hybrid of tramp-land, an alki-stiff that has
+degenerated into a stew-bum, with so little self-respect that he will
+never &ldquo;boil-up,&rdquo; and with so little pride that he will eat
+out of a garbage can.&nbsp; He was truly horrible-appearing.&nbsp; He
+might have been sixty years of age; he might have been ninety.&nbsp;
+His garments might have been discarded by a rag-picker.&nbsp; Beside
+him, an unrolled bundle showed itself as consisting of a ragged overcoat
+and containing an empty and smoke-blackened tomato can, an empty and
+battered condensed milk can, some dog-meat partly wrapped in brown paper
+and evidently begged from some butcher-shop, a carrot that had been
+run over in the street by a wagon-wheel, three greenish-cankered and
+decayed potatoes, and a sugar-bun with a mouthful bitten from it and
+rescued from the gutter, as was made patent by the gutter-filth that
+still encrusted it.</p>
+<p>A prodigious growth of whiskers, greyish-dirty and untrimmed for
+years, sprouted from his face.&nbsp; This hirsute growth should have
+been white, but the season was summer and it had not been exposed to
+a rain-shower for some time.&nbsp; What was visible of the face looked
+as if at some period it had stopped a hand-grenade.&nbsp; The nose was
+so variously malformed in its healed brokenness that there was no bridge,
+while one nostril, the size of a pea, opened downward, and the other,
+the size of a robin&rsquo;s egg, tilted upward to the sky.&nbsp; One
+eye, of normal size, dim-brown and misty, bulged to the verge of popping
+out, and as if from senility wept copiously and continuously.&nbsp;
+The other eye, scarcely larger than a squirrel&rsquo;s and as uncannily
+bright, twisted up obliquely into the hairy scar of a bone-crushed eyebrow.&nbsp;
+And he had but one arm.</p>
+<p>Yet was he cheerful.&nbsp; On his face, in mild degree, was depicted
+sensuous pleasure as he lethargically scratched his ribs with his one
+hand.&nbsp; He pawed over his food-scraps, debated, then drew a twelve-ounce
+druggist bottle from his inside coat-pocket.&nbsp; The bottle was full
+of a colourless liquid, the contemplation of which made his little eye
+burn brighter and quickened his movements.&nbsp; Picking up the tomato
+can, he arose, went down the short path to the river, and returned with
+the can filled with not-nice river water.&nbsp; In the condensed milk
+can he mixed one part of water with two parts of fluid from the bottle.&nbsp;
+This colourless fluid was druggist&rsquo;s alcohol, and as such is known
+in tramp-land as &ldquo;alki.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Slow footsteps, coming down the side of the railroad embankment,
+alarmed him ere he could drink.&nbsp; Placing the can carefully upon
+the ground between his legs, he covered it with his hat and waited anxiously
+whatever impended.</p>
+<p>Out of the darkness emerged a man as filthy ragged as he.&nbsp; The
+new-comer, who might have been fifty, and might have been sixty, was
+grotesquely fat.&nbsp; He bulged everywhere.&nbsp; He was composed of
+bulges.&nbsp; His bulbous nose was the size and shape of a turnip.&nbsp;
+His eyelids bulged and his blue eyes bulged in competition with them.&nbsp;
+In many places the seams of his garments had parted across the bulges
+of body.&nbsp; His calves grew into his feet, for the broken elastic
+sides of his Congress gaiters were swelled full with the fat of him.&nbsp;
+One arm only he sported, from the shoulder of which was suspended a
+small and tattered bundle with the mud caked dry on the outer covering
+from the last place he had pitched his doss.&nbsp; He advanced with
+tentative caution, made sure of the harmlessness of the man beside the
+fire, and joined him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hello, grandpa,&rdquo; the new-comer greeted, then paused
+to stare at the other&rsquo;s flaring, sky-open nostril.&nbsp; &ldquo;Say,
+Whiskers, how&rsquo;d ye keep the night dew out of that nose o&rsquo;
+yourn?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Whiskers growled an incoherence deep in his throat and spat into
+the fire in token that he was not pleased by the question.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For the love of Mike,&rdquo; the fat man chuckled, &ldquo;if
+you got caught out in a rainstorm without an umbrella you&rsquo;d sure
+drown, wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can it, Fatty, can it,&rdquo; Whiskers muttered wearily.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;They ain&rsquo;t nothin&rsquo; new in that line of chatter.&nbsp;
+Even the bulls hand it out to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you can still drink, I hope&rdquo;; Fatty at the same
+time mollified and invited, with his one hand deftly pulling the slip-knots
+that fastened his bundle.</p>
+<p>From within the bundle he brought to light a twelve-ounce bottle
+of alki.&nbsp; Footsteps coming down the embankment alarmed him, and
+he hid the bottle under his hat on the ground between his legs.</p>
+<p>But the next comer proved to be not merely one of their own ilk,
+but likewise to have only one arm.&nbsp; So forbidding of aspect was
+he that greetings consisted of no more than grunts.&nbsp; Huge-boned,
+tall, gaunt to cadaverousness, his face a dirty death&rsquo;s head,
+he was as repellent a nightmare of old age as ever Dor&eacute; imagined.&nbsp;
+His toothless, thin-lipped mouth was a cruel and bitter slash under
+a great curved nose that almost met the chin and that was like a buzzard&rsquo;s
+beak.&nbsp; His one hand, lean and crooked, was a talon.&nbsp; The beady
+grey eyes, unblinking and unwavering, were bitter as death, as bleak
+as absolute zero and as merciless.&nbsp; His presence was a chill, and
+Whiskers and Fatty instinctively drew together for protection against
+the unguessed threat of him.&nbsp; Watching his chance, privily, Whiskers
+snuggled a chunk of rock several pounds in weigh close to his hand if
+need for action should arise.&nbsp; Fatty duplicated the performance.</p>
+<p>Then both sat licking their lips, guiltily embarrassed, while the
+unblinking eyes of the terrible one bored into them, now into one, now
+into another, and then down at the rock-chunks of their preparedness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; sneered the terrible one, with such dreadfulness
+of menace as to cause Whiskers and Fatty involuntarily to close their
+hands down on their cave-man&rsquo;s weapons.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; the other repeated, reaching his one talon into
+his side coat pocket with swift definiteness.&nbsp; &ldquo;A hell of
+a chance you two cheap bums &rsquo;d have with me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The talon emerged, clutching ready for action a six-pound iron quoit.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We ain&rsquo;t lookin&rsquo; for trouble, Slim,&rdquo; Fatty
+quavered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who in hell are you to call me &lsquo;Slim&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+came the snarling answer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Me?&nbsp; I&rsquo;m just Fatty, an&rsquo; seein&rsquo; &rsquo;s
+I never seen you before - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An&rsquo; I suppose that&rsquo;s Whiskers, there, with the
+gay an&rsquo; festive lamp tan-going into his eyebrow an&rsquo; the
+God-forgive-us nose joy-riding all over his mug?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;ll do, it&rsquo;ll do,&rdquo; Whiskers muttered uncomfortably.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;One monica&rsquo;s as good as another, I find, at my time of
+life.&nbsp; And everybody hands it out to me anyway.&nbsp; And I need
+an umbrella when it rains to keep from getting drowned, an&rsquo; all
+the rest of it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I ain&rsquo;t used to company - don&rsquo;t like it,&rdquo;
+Slim growled.&nbsp; &ldquo;So if you guys want to stick around, mind
+your step, that&rsquo;s all, mind your step.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He fished from his pocket a cigar stump, self-evidently shot from
+the gutter, and prepared to put it in his mouth to chew.&nbsp; Then
+he changed his mind, glared at his companions savagely, and unrolled
+his bundle.&nbsp; Appeared in his hand a druggist&rsquo;s bottle of
+alki.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he snarled, &ldquo;I suppose I gotta give you
+cheap skates a drink when I ain&rsquo;t got more&rsquo;n enough for
+a good petrification for myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Almost a softening flicker of light was imminent in his withered
+face as he beheld the others proudly lift their hats and exhibit their
+own supplies.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s some water for the mixin&rsquo;s,&rdquo; Whiskers
+said, proffering his tomato-can of river slush.&nbsp; &ldquo;Stockyards
+just above,&rdquo; he added apologetically.&nbsp; &ldquo;But they say
+- &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; Slim snapped short, mixing the drink.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+drunk worse&rsquo;n stockyards in my time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Yet when all was ready, cans of alki in their solitary hands, the
+three things that had once been men hesitated, as if of old habit, and
+next betrayed shame as if at self-exposure.</p>
+<p>Whiskers was the first to brazen it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sat in at many a finer drinking,&rdquo; he bragged.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With the pewter,&rdquo; Slim sneered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With the silver,&rdquo; Whiskers corrected.</p>
+<p>Slim turned a scorching eye-interrogation on Fatty.</p>
+<p>Fatty nodded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Beneath the salt,&rdquo; said Slim.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Above it,&rdquo; came Fatty&rsquo;s correction.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+was born above it, and I&rsquo;ve never travelled second class.&nbsp;
+First or steerage, but no intermediate in mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yourself?&rdquo; Whiskers queried of Slim.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In broken glass to the Queen, God bless her,&rdquo; Slim answered,
+solemnly, without snarl or sneer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the pantry?&rdquo; Fatty insinuated.</p>
+<p>Simultaneously Slim reached for his quoit, and Whiskers and Fatty
+for their rocks.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s get feverish,&rdquo; Fatty said,
+dropping his own weapon.&nbsp; &ldquo;We aren&rsquo;t scum.&nbsp; We&rsquo;re
+gentlemen.&nbsp; Let&rsquo;s drink like gentlemen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let it be a real drinking,&rdquo; Whiskers approved.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s get petrified,&rdquo; Slim agreed.&nbsp; &ldquo;Many
+a distillery&rsquo;s flowed under the bridge since we were gentlemen;
+but let&rsquo;s forget the long road we&rsquo;ve travelled since, and
+hit our doss in the good old fashion in which every gentleman went to
+bed when we were young.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My father done it - did it,&rdquo; Fatty concurred and corrected,
+as old recollections exploded long-sealed brain-cells of connotation
+and correct usage.</p>
+<p>The other two nodded a descent from similar fathers, and elevated
+their tin cans of alcohol.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>By the time each had finished his own bottle and from his rags fished
+forth a second one, their brains were well-mellowed and a-glow, although
+they had not got around to telling their real names.&nbsp; But their
+English had improved.&nbsp; They spoke it correctly, while the argo
+of tramp-land ceased from their lips.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s my constitution,&rdquo; Whiskers was explaining.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Very few men could go through what I have and live to tell the
+tale.&nbsp; And I never took any care of myself.&nbsp; If what the moralists
+and the physiologists say were true, I&rsquo;d have been dead long ago.&nbsp;
+And it&rsquo;s the same with you two.&nbsp; Look at us, at our advanced
+years, carousing as the young ones don&rsquo;t dare, sleeping out in
+the open on the ground, never sheltered from frost nor rain nor storm,
+never afraid of pneumonia or rheumatism that would put half the young
+ones on their backs in hospital.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He broke off to mix another drink, and Fatty took up the tale.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And we&rsquo;ve had our fun,&rdquo; he boasted, &ldquo;and
+speaking of sweethearts and all,&rdquo; he cribbed from Kipling, &ldquo;&lsquo;We&rsquo;ve
+rogued and we&rsquo;ve ranged - &rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;In our time,&rsquo;&rdquo; Slim completed the crib
+for him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should say so, I should say so,&rdquo; Fatty confirmed.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;And been loved by princesses - at least I have.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go on and tell us about it,&rdquo; Whiskers urged.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+night&rsquo;s young, and why shouldn&rsquo;t we remember back to the
+roofs of kings?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Nothing loth, Fatty cleared his throat for the recital and cast about
+in his mind for the best way to begin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It must be known that I came of good family.&nbsp; Percival
+Delaney, let us say, yes, let us say Percival Delaney, was not unknown
+at Oxford once upon a time - not for scholarship, I am frank to admit;
+but the gay young dogs of that day, if any be yet alive, would remember
+him - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My people came over with the Conqueror,&rdquo; Whiskers interrupted,
+extending his hand to Fatty&rsquo;s in acknowledgment of the introduction.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What name?&rdquo; Fatty queried.&nbsp; &ldquo;I did not seem
+quite to catch it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Delarouse, Chauncey Delarouse.&nbsp; The name will serve as
+well as any.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Both completed the handshake and glanced to Slim.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, while we&rsquo;re about it . . . &rdquo;&nbsp; Fatty
+urged.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bruce Cadogan Cavendish,&rdquo; Slim growled morosely.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Go on, Percival, with your princesses and the roofs of kings.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I was a rare young devil,&rdquo; Percival obliged, &ldquo;after
+I played ducks and drakes at home and sported out over the world.&nbsp;
+And I was some figure of a man before I lost my shape - polo, steeple-chasing,
+boxing.&nbsp; I won medals at buckjumping in Australia, and I held more
+than several swimming records from the quarter of a mile up.&nbsp; Women
+turned their heads to look when I went by.&nbsp; The women!&nbsp; God
+bless them!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And Fatty, alias Percival Delaney, a grotesque of manhood, put his
+bulgy hand to his puffed lips and kissed audibly into the starry vault
+of the sky.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And the Princess!&rdquo; he resumed, with another kiss to
+the stars.&nbsp; &ldquo;She was as fine a figure of a woman as I was
+a man, as high-spirited and courageous, as reckless and dare-devilish.&nbsp;
+Lord, Lord, in the water she was a mermaid, a sea-goddess.&nbsp; And
+when it came to blood, beside her I was parvenu.&nbsp; Her royal line
+traced back into the mists of antiquity.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She was not a daughter of a fair-skinned folk.&nbsp; Tawny
+golden was she, with golden-brown eyes, and her hair that fell to her
+knees was blue-black and straight, with just the curly tendrilly tendency
+that gives to woman&rsquo;s hair its charm.&nbsp; Oh, there were no
+kinks in it, any more than were there kinks in the hair of her entire
+genealogy.&nbsp; For she was Polynesian, glowing, golden, lovely and
+lovable, royal Polynesian.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Again he paused to kiss his hand to the memory of her, and Slim,
+alias Bruce Cadogan Cavendish, took advantage to interject:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Huh!&nbsp; Maybe you didn&rsquo;t shine in scholarship, but
+at least you gleaned a vocabulary out of Oxford.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And in the South Seas garnered a better vocabulary from the
+lexicon of Love,&rdquo; Percival was quick on the uptake.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was the island of Talofa,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;meaning
+love, the Isle of Love, and it was her island.&nbsp; Her father, the
+king, an old man, sat on his mats with paralysed knees and drank squareface
+gin all day and most of the night, out of grief, sheer grief.&nbsp;
+She, my princess, was the only issue, her brother having been lost in
+their double canoe in a hurricane while coming up from a voyage to Samoa.&nbsp;
+And among the Polynesians the royal women have equal right with the
+men to rule.&nbsp; In fact, they trace their genealogies always by the
+female line.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To this both Chauncey Delarouse and Bruce Cadogan Cavendish nodded
+prompt affirmation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Percival, &ldquo;I perceive you both know
+the South Seas, wherefore, without undue expenditure of verbiage on
+my part, I am assured that you will appreciate the charm of my princess,
+the Princess Tui-nui of Talofa, the Princess of the Isle of Love.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He kissed his hand to her, sipped from his condensed milk can a man-size
+drink of druggist&rsquo;s alcohol, and to her again kissed her hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But she was coy, and ever she fluttered near to me but never
+near enough.&nbsp; When my arm went out to her to girdle her, presto,
+she was not there.&nbsp; I knew, as never before, nor since, the thousand
+dear and delightful anguishes of love frustrated but ever resilient
+and beckoned on by the very goddess of love.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some vocabulary,&rdquo; Bruce Cadogan Cavendish muttered in
+aside to Chauncey Delarouse.&nbsp; But Percival Delaney was not to be
+deterred.&nbsp; He kissed his pudgy hand aloft into the night and held
+warmly on.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No fond agonies of rapture deferred that were not lavished
+upon me by my dear Princess, herself ever a luring delight of promise
+flitting just beyond my reach.&nbsp; Every sweet lover&rsquo;s inferno
+unguessed of by Dante she led me through.&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; Those swooning
+tropic nights, under our palm trees, the distant surf a langourous murmur
+as from some vast sea shell of mystery, when she, my Princess, all but
+melted to my yearning, and with her laughter, that was as silver strings
+by buds and blossoms smitten, all but made lunacy of my lover&rsquo;s
+ardency.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was by my wrestling with the champions of Talofa that I
+first interested her.&nbsp; It was by my prowess at swimming that I
+awoke her.&nbsp; And it was by a certain swimming deed that I won from
+her more than coquettish smiles and shy timidities of feigned retreat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We were squidding that day, out on the reef - you know how,
+undoubtedly, diving down the face of the wall of the reef, five fathoms,
+ten fathoms, any depth within reason, and shoving our squid-sticks into
+the likely holes and crannies of the coral where squid might be lairing.&nbsp;
+With the squid-stick, bluntly sharp at both ends, perhaps a foot long,
+and held crosswise in the hand, the trick was to gouge any lazying squid
+until he closed his tentacles around fist, stick and arm. - Then you
+had him, and came to the surface with him, and hit him in the head which
+is in the centre of him, and peeled him off into the waiting canoe.
+. . . And to think I used to do that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Percival Delaney paused a moment, a glimmer of awe on his rotund
+face, as he contemplated the mighty picture of his youth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, I&rsquo;ve pulled out a squid with tentacles eight feet
+long, and done it under fifty feet of water.&nbsp; I could stay down
+four minutes.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve gone down, with a coral-rock to sink
+me, in a hundred and ten feet to clear a fouled anchor.&nbsp; And I
+could back-dive with a once-over and go in feet-first from eighty feet
+above the surface - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Quit it, delete it, cease it,&rdquo; Chauncey Delarouse admonished
+testily.&nbsp; &ldquo;Tell of the Princess.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s what
+makes old blood leap again.&nbsp; Almost can I see her.&nbsp; Was she
+wonderful?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Percival Delaney kissed unutterable affirmation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have said she was a mermaid.&nbsp; She was.&nbsp; I know
+she swam thirty-six hours before being rescued, after her schooner was
+capsized in a double-squall.&nbsp; I have seen her do ninety feet and
+bring up pearl shell in each hand.&nbsp; She was wonderful.&nbsp; As
+a woman she was ravishing, sublime.&nbsp; I have said she was a sea-goddess.&nbsp;
+She was.&nbsp; Oh, for a Phidias or a Praxiteles to have made the wonder
+of her body immortal!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And that day, out for squid on the reef, I was almost sick
+for her.&nbsp; Mad - I know I was mad for her.&nbsp; We would step over
+the side from the big canoe, and swim down, side by side, into the delicious
+depths of cool and colour, and she would look at me, as we swam, and
+with her eyes tantalize me to further madness.&nbsp; And at last, down,
+far down, I lost myself and reached for her.&nbsp; She eluded me like
+the mermaid she was, and I saw the laughter on her face as she fled.&nbsp;
+She fled deeper, and I knew I had her for I was between her and the
+surface; but in the muck coral sand of the bottom she made a churning
+with her squid stick.&nbsp; It was the old trick to escape a shark.&nbsp;
+And she worked it on me, rolling the water so that I could not see her.&nbsp;
+And when I came up, she was there ahead of me, clinging to the side
+of the canoe and laughing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Almost I would not be denied.&nbsp; But not for nothing was
+she a princess.&nbsp; She rested her hand on my arm and compelled me
+to listen.&nbsp; We should play a game, she said, enter into a competition
+for which should get the more squid, the biggest squid, and the smallest
+squid.&nbsp; Since the wagers were kisses, you can well imagine I went
+down on the first next dive with soul aflame.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I got no squid.&nbsp; Never again in all my life have I dived
+for squid.&nbsp; Perhaps we were five fathoms down and exploring the
+face of the reefwall for lurking places of our prey, when it happened.&nbsp;
+I had found a likely lair and just proved it empty, when I felt or sensed
+the nearness of something inimical.&nbsp; I turned.&nbsp; There it was,
+alongside of me, and no mere fish-shark.&nbsp; Fully a dozen feet in
+length, with the unmistakable phosphorescent cat&rsquo;s eye gleaming
+like a drowning star, I knew it for what it was, a tiger shark.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not ten feet to the right, probing a coral fissure with her
+squid stick, was the Princess, and the tiger shark was heading directly
+for her.&nbsp; My totality of thought was precipitated to consciousness
+in a single all-embracing flash.&nbsp; The man-eater must be deflected
+from her, and what was I, except a mad lover who would gladly fight
+and die, or more gladly fight and live, for his beloved?&nbsp; Remember,
+she was the woman wonderful, and I was aflame for her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Knowing fully the peril of my act, I thrust the blunt-sharp
+end of my squid-stick into the side of the shark, much as one would
+attract a passing acquaintance with a thumb-nudge in the ribs.&nbsp;
+And the man-eater turned on me.&nbsp; You know the South Seas, and you
+know that the tiger shark, like the bald-face grizzly of Alaska, never
+gives trail.&nbsp; The combat, fathoms deep under the sea, was on -
+if by combat may be named such a one-sided struggle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Princess unaware, caught her squid and rose to the surface.&nbsp;
+The man-eater rushed me.&nbsp; I fended him off with both hands on his
+nose above his thousand-toothed open mouth, so that he backed me against
+the sharp coral.&nbsp; The scars are there to this day.&nbsp; Whenever
+I tried to rise, he rushed me, and I could not remain down there indefinitely
+without air.&nbsp; Whenever he rushed me, I fended him off with my hands
+on his nose.&nbsp; And I would have escaped unharmed, except for the
+slip of my right hand.&nbsp; Into his mouth it went to the elbow.&nbsp;
+His jaws closed, just below the elbow.&nbsp; You know how a shark&rsquo;s
+teeth are.&nbsp; Once in they cannot be released.&nbsp; They must go
+through to complete the bite, but they cannot go through heavy bone.&nbsp;
+So, from just below the elbow he stripped the bone clean to the articulation
+of the wrist-joint, where his teeth met and my good right hand became
+his for an appetizer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But while he was doing this, I drove the thumb of my left
+hand, to the hilt into his eye-orifice and popped out his eye.&nbsp;
+This did not stop him.&nbsp; The meat had maddened him.&nbsp; He pursued
+the gushing stump of my wrist.&nbsp; Half a dozen times I fended with
+my intact arm.&nbsp; Then he got the poor mangled arm again, closed
+down, and stripped the meat off the bone from the shoulder down to the
+elbow-joint, where his teeth met and he was free of his second mouthful
+of me.&nbsp; But, at the same time, with my good arm, I thumbed out
+his remaining eye.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Percival Delaney shrugged his shoulders, ere he resumed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;From above, those in the canoe had beheld the entire happening
+and were loud in praise of my deed.&nbsp; To this day they still sing
+the song of me, and tell the tale of me.&nbsp; And the Princess.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+His pause was brief but significant.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Princess married
+me. . . . Oh, well-a-day and lack-a-day, the whirligig of time and fortune,
+the topsyturviness of luck, the wooden shoe going up and the polished
+heel descending a French gunboat, a conquered island kingdom of Oceania,
+to-day ruled over by a peasant-born, unlettered, colonial gendarme,
+and . . . &rdquo;</p>
+<p>He completed the sentence and the tale by burying his face in the
+down-tilted mouth of the condensed milk can and by gurgling the corrosive
+drink down his throat in thirsty gulps.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>After an appropriate pause, Chauncey Delarouse, otherwise Whiskers,
+took up the tale.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Far be it from me to boast of no matter what place of birth
+I have descended from to sit here by this fire with such as . . . as
+chance along.&nbsp; I may say, however, that I, too, was once a considerable
+figure of a man.&nbsp; I may add that it was horses, plus parents too
+indulgent, that exiled me out over the world.&nbsp; I may still wonder
+to query: &lsquo;Are Dover&rsquo;s cliffs still white?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; Bruce Cadogan Cavendish sneered.&nbsp; &ldquo;Next
+you&rsquo;ll be asking: &lsquo;How fares the old Lord Warden?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I took every liberty, and vainly, with a constitution
+that was iron,&rdquo; Whiskers hurried on.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here I am with
+my three score and ten behind me, and back on that long road have I
+buried many a youngster that was as rare and devilish as I, but who
+could not stand the pace.&nbsp; I knew the worst too young.&nbsp; And
+now I know the worst too old.&nbsp; But there was a time, alas all too
+short, when I knew, the best.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I, too, kiss my hand to the Princess of my heart.&nbsp; She
+was truly a princess, Polynesian, a thousand miles and more away to
+the eastward and the south from Delaney&rsquo;s Isle of Love.&nbsp;
+The natives of all around that part of the South Seas called it the
+Jolly Island.&nbsp; Their own name, the name of the people who dwelt
+thereon, translates delicately and justly into &lsquo;The Island of
+Tranquil Laughter.&rsquo;&nbsp; On the chart you will find the erroneous
+name given to it by the old navigators to be Manatomana.&nbsp; The seafaring
+gentry the round ocean around called it the Adamless Eden.&nbsp; And
+the missionaries for a time called it God&rsquo;s Witness - so great
+had been their success at converting the inhabitants.&nbsp; As for me,
+it was, and ever shall be, Paradise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was <i>my</i> Paradise, for it was there my Princess lived.&nbsp;
+John Asibeli Tungi was king.&nbsp; He was full-blooded native, descended
+out of the oldest and highest chief-stock that traced back to Manua
+which was the primeval sea home of the race.&nbsp; Also was he known
+as John the Apostate.&nbsp; He lived a long life and apostasized frequently.&nbsp;
+First converted by the Catholics, he threw down the idols, broke the
+tabus, cleaned out the native priests, executed a few of the recalcitrant
+ones, and sent all his subjects to church.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Next he fell for the traders, who developed in him a champagne
+thirst, and he shipped off the Catholic priests to New Zealand.&nbsp;
+The great majority of his subjects always followed his lead, and, having
+no religion at all, ensued the time of the Great Licentiousness, when
+by all South Seas missionaries his island, in sermons, was spoken of
+as Babylon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But the traders ruined his digestion with too much champagne,
+and after several years he fell for the Gospel according to the Methodists,
+sent his people to church, and cleaned up the beach and the trading
+crowd so spick and span that he would not permit them to smoke a pipe
+out of doors on Sunday, and, fined one of the chief traders one hundred
+gold sovereigns for washing his schooner&rsquo;s decks on the Sabbath
+morn.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That was the time of the Blue Laws, but perhaps it was too
+rigorous for King John.&nbsp; Off he packed the Methodists, one fine
+day, exiled several hundred of his people to Samoa for sticking to Methodism,
+and, of all things, invented a religion of his own, with himself the
+figure-head of worship.&nbsp; In this he was aided and abetted by a
+renegade Fijian.&nbsp; This lasted five years.&nbsp; Maybe he grew tired
+of being God, or maybe it was because the Fijian decamped with the six
+thousand pounds in the royal treasury; but at any rate the Second Reformed
+Wesleyans got him, and his entire kingdom went Wesleyan.&nbsp; The pioneer
+Wesleyan missionary he actually made prime minister, and what he did
+to the trading crowd was a caution.&nbsp; Why, in the end, King John&rsquo;s
+kingdom was blacklisted and boycotted by the traders till the revenues
+diminished to zero, the people went bankrupt, and King John couldn&rsquo;t
+borrow a shilling from his most powerful chief.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By this time he was getting old, and philosophic, and tolerant,
+and spiritually atavistic.&nbsp; He fired out the Second Reformed Wesleyans,
+called back the exiles from Samoa, invited in the traders, held a general
+love-feast, took the lid off, proclaimed religious liberty and high
+tariff, and as for himself went back to the worship of his ancestors,
+dug up the idols, reinstated a few octogenarian priests, and observed
+the tabus.&nbsp; All of which was lovely for the traders, and prosperity
+reigned.&nbsp; Of course, most of his subjects followed him back into
+heathen worship.&nbsp; Yet quite a sprinkling of Catholics, Methodists
+and Wesleyans remained true to their beliefs and managed to maintain
+a few squalid, one-horse churches.&nbsp; But King John didn&rsquo;t
+mind, any more than did he the high times of the traders along the beach.&nbsp;
+Everything went, so long as the taxes were paid.&nbsp; Even when his
+wife, Queen Mamare, elected to become a Baptist, and invited in a little,
+weazened, sweet-spirited, club-footed Baptist missionary, King John
+did not object.&nbsp; All he insisted on was that these wandering religions
+should be self-supporting and not feed a pennyworth&rsquo;s out of the
+royal coffers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And now the threads of my recital draw together in the paragon
+of female exquisiteness - my Princess.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Whiskers paused, placed carefully on the ground his half-full condensed
+milk can with which he had been absently toying, and kissed the fingers
+of his one hand audibly aloft.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She was the daughter of Queen Mamare.&nbsp; She was the woman
+wonderful.&nbsp; Unlike the Diana type of Polynesian, she was almost
+ethereal.&nbsp; She <i>was</i> ethereal, sublimated by purity, as shy
+and modest as a violet, as fragile-slender as a lily, and her eyes,
+luminous and shrinking tender, were as asphodels on the sward of heaven.&nbsp;
+She was all flower, and fire, and dew.&nbsp; Hers was the sweetness
+of the mountain rose, the gentleness of the dove.&nbsp; And she was
+all of good as well as all of beauty, devout in her belief in her mother&rsquo;s
+worship, which was the worship introduced by Ebenezer Naismith, the
+Baptist missionary.&nbsp; But make no mistake.&nbsp; She was no mere
+sweet spirit ripe for the bosom of Abraham.&nbsp; All of exquisite deliciousness
+of woman was she.&nbsp; She was woman, all woman, to the last sensitive
+quivering atom of her -</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I?&nbsp; I was a wastrel of the beach.&nbsp; The wildest
+was not so wild as I, the keenest not so keen, of all that wild, keen
+trading crowd.&nbsp; It was esteemed I played the stiffest hand of poker.&nbsp;
+I was the only living man, white, brown, or black, who dared run the
+Kuni-kuni Passage in the dark.&nbsp; And on a black night I have done
+it under reefs in a gale of wind.&nbsp; Well, anyway, I had a bad reputation
+on a beach where there were no good reputations.&nbsp; I was reckless,
+dangerous, stopped at nothing in fight or frolic; and the trading captains
+used to bring boiler-sheeted prodigies from the vilest holes of the
+South Pacific to try and drink me under the table.&nbsp; I remember
+one, a calcined Scotchman from the New Hebrides.&nbsp; It was a great
+drinking.&nbsp; He died of it, and we laded him aboard ship, pickled
+in a cask of trade rum, and sent him back to his own place.&nbsp; A
+sample, a fair sample, of the antic tricks we cut up on the beach of
+Manatomana.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And of all unthinkable things, what did I up and do, one day,
+but look upon the Princess to find her good and to fall in love with
+her.&nbsp; It was the real thing.&nbsp; I was as mad as a March hare,
+and after that I got only madder.&nbsp; I reformed.&nbsp; Think of that!&nbsp;
+Think of what a slip of a woman can do to a busy, roving man! - By the
+Lord Harry, it&rsquo;s true.&nbsp; I reformed.&nbsp; I went to church.&nbsp;
+Hear me!&nbsp; I became converted.&nbsp; I cleared my soul before God
+and kept my hands - I had two then - off the ribald crew of the beach
+when it laughed at this, my latest antic, and wanted to know what was
+my game.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you I reformed, and gave myself in passion and sincerity
+to a religious experience that has made me tolerant of all religion
+ever since.&nbsp; I discharged my best captain for immorality.&nbsp;
+So did I my cook, and a better never boiled water in Manatomana.&nbsp;
+For the same reason I discharged my chief clerk.&nbsp; And for the first
+time in the history of trading my schooners to the westward carried
+Bibles in their stock.&nbsp; I built a little anchorite bungalow up
+town on a mango-lined street squarely alongside the little house occupied
+by Ebenezer Naismith.&nbsp; And I made him my pal and comrade, and found
+him a veritable honey pot of sweetnesses and goodnesses.&nbsp; And he
+was a man, through and through a man.&nbsp; And he died long after like
+a man, which I would like to tell you about, were the tale of it not
+so deservedly long.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was the Princess, more than the missionary, who was responsible
+for my expressing my faith in works, and especially in that crowning
+work, the New Church, Our Church, the Queen-mother&rsquo;s church.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Our poor church,&rsquo; she said to me, one night after
+prayer-meeting.&nbsp; I had been converted only a fortnight.&nbsp; &lsquo;It
+is so small its congregation can never grow.&nbsp; And the roof leaks.&nbsp;
+And King John, my hard-hearted father, will not contribute a penny.&nbsp;
+Yet he has a big balance in the treasury.&nbsp; And Manatomana is not
+poor.&nbsp; Much money is made and squandered, I know.&nbsp; I hear
+the gossip of the wild ways of the beach.&nbsp; Less than a month ago
+you lost more in one night, gambling at cards, than the cost of the
+upkeep of our poor church for a year.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I told her it was true, but that it was before I had seen
+the light.&nbsp; (I&rsquo;d had an infernal run of bad luck.)&nbsp;
+I told her I had not tasted liquor since, nor turned a card.&nbsp; I
+told her that the roof would be repaired at once, by Christian carpenters
+selected by her from the congregation.&nbsp; But she was filled with
+the thought of a great revival that Ebenezer Naismith could preach -
+she was a dear saint - and she spoke of a great church, saying:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You are rich.&nbsp; You have many schooners, and traders
+in far islands, and I have heard of a great contract you have signed
+to recruit labour for the German plantations of Upolu.&nbsp; They say,
+next to Sweitzer, you are the richest trader here.&nbsp; I should love
+to see some use of all this money placed to the glory of God.&nbsp;
+It would be a noble thing to do, and I should be proud to know the man
+who would do it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I told her that Ebenezer Naismith would preach the revival,
+and that I would build a church great enough in which to house it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;As big as the Catholic church?&rsquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This was the ruined cathedral, built at the time when the
+entire population was converted, and it was a large order; but I was
+afire with love, and I told her that the church I would build would
+be even bigger.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But it will take money,&rsquo; I explained.&nbsp; &lsquo;And
+it takes time to make money.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You have much,&rsquo; she said.&nbsp; &lsquo;Some say
+you have more money than my father, the King.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;I have more credit,&rsquo; I explained.&nbsp; &lsquo;But
+you do not understand money.&nbsp; It takes money to have credit.&nbsp;
+So, with the money I have, and the credit I have, I will work to make
+more money and credit, and the church shall be built.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Work!&nbsp; I was a surprise to myself.&nbsp; It is an amazement,
+the amount of time a man finds on his hands after he&rsquo;s given up
+carousing, and gambling, and all the time-eating diversions of the beach.&nbsp;
+And I didn&rsquo;t waste a second of all my new-found time.&nbsp; Instead
+I worked it overtime.&nbsp; I did the work of half a dozen men.&nbsp;
+I became a driver.&nbsp; My captains made faster runs than ever and
+earned bigger bonuses, as did my supercargoes, who saw to it that my
+schooners did not loaf and dawdle along the way.&nbsp; And I saw to
+it that my supercargoes did see to it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And good!&nbsp; By the Lord Harry I was so good it hurt.&nbsp;
+My conscience got so expansive and fine-strung it lamed me across the
+shoulders to carry it around with me.&nbsp; Why, I even went back over
+my accounts and paid Sweitzer fifty quid I&rsquo;d jiggered him out
+of in a deal in Fiji three years before.&nbsp; And I compounded the
+interest as well.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Work!&nbsp; I planted sugar cane - the first commercial planting
+on Manatomana.&nbsp; I ran in cargoes of kinky-heads from Malaita, which
+is in the Solomons, till I had twelve hundred of the blackbirds putting
+in cane.&nbsp; And I sent a schooner clear to Hawaii to bring back a
+dismantled sugar mill and a German who said he knew the field-end of
+cane.&nbsp; And he did, and he charged me three hundred dollars screw
+a month, and I took hold of the mill-end.&nbsp; I installed the mill
+myself, with the help of several mechanics I brought up from Queensland.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course there was a rival.&nbsp; His name was Motomoe.&nbsp;
+He was the very highest chief blood next to King John&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+He was full native, a strapping, handsome man, with a glowering way
+of showing his dislikes.&nbsp; He certainly glowered at me when I began
+hanging around the palace.&nbsp; He went back in my history and circulated
+the blackest tales about me.&nbsp; The worst of it was that most of
+them were true.&nbsp; He even made a voyage to Apia to find things out
+- as if he couldn&rsquo;t find a plenty right there on the beach of
+Manatomana!&nbsp; And he sneered at my failing for religion, and at
+my going to prayer-meeting, and, most of all, at my sugar-planting.&nbsp;
+He challenged me to fight, and I kept off of him.&nbsp; He threatened
+me, and I learned in the nick of time of his plan to have me knocked
+on the head.&nbsp; You see, he wanted the Princess just as much as I
+did, and I wanted her more.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She used to play the piano.&nbsp; So did I, once.&nbsp; But
+I never let her know after I&rsquo;d heard her play the first time.&nbsp;
+And she thought her playing was wonderful, the dear, fond girl!&nbsp;
+You know the sort, the mechanical one-two-three tum-tum-tum school-girl
+stuff.&nbsp; And now I&rsquo;ll tell you something funnier.&nbsp; Her
+playing <i>was</i> wonderful to me.&nbsp; The gates of heaven opened
+to me when she played.&nbsp; I can see myself now, worn out and dog-tired
+after the long day, lying on the mats of the palace veranda and gazing
+upon her at the piano, myself in a perfect idiocy of bliss.&nbsp; Why,
+this idea she had of her fine playing was the one flaw in her deliciousness
+of perfection, and I loved her for it.&nbsp; It kind of brought her
+within my human reach.&nbsp; Why, when she played her one-two-three,
+tum-tum-tum, I was in the seventh heaven of bliss.&nbsp; My weariness
+fell from me.&nbsp; I loved her, and my love for her was clean as flame,
+clean as my love for God.&nbsp; And do you know, into my fond lover&rsquo;s
+fancy continually intruded the thought that God in most ways must look
+like her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo; - That&rsquo;s right, Bruce Cadogan Cavendish, sneer as you
+like.&nbsp; But I tell you that&rsquo;s love that I&rsquo;ve been describing.&nbsp;
+That&rsquo;s all.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s love.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s the realest,
+purest, finest thing that can happen to a man.&nbsp; And I know what
+I&rsquo;m talking about.&nbsp; It happened to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Whiskers, his beady squirrel&rsquo;s eye glittering from out his
+ruined eyebrow like a live coal in a jungle ambush, broke off long enough
+to down a sedative draught from his condensed milk can and to mix another.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The cane,&rdquo; he resumed, wiping his prodigious mat of
+face hair with the back of his hand.&nbsp; &ldquo;It matured in sixteen
+months in that climate, and I was ready, just ready and no more, with
+the mill for the grinding.&nbsp; Naturally, it did not all mature at
+once, but I had planted in such succession that I could grind for nine
+months steadily, while more was being planted and the ratoons were springing
+up.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I had my troubles the first several days.&nbsp; If it wasn&rsquo;t
+one thing the matter with the mill, it was another.&nbsp; On the fourth
+day, Ferguson, my engineer, had to shut down several hours in order
+to remedy his own troubles.&nbsp; I was bothered by the feeder.&nbsp;
+After having the niggers (who had been feeding the cane) pour cream
+of lime on the rollers to keep everything sweet, I sent them out to
+join the cane-cutting squads.&nbsp; So I was all alone at that end,
+just as Ferguson started up the mill, just as I discovered what was
+the matter with the feed-rollers, and just as Motomoe strolled up.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He stood there, in Norfolk jacket, pigskin puttees, and all
+the rest of the fashionable get-up out of a bandbox, sneering at me
+covered with filth and grease to the eyebrows and looking like a navvy.&nbsp;
+And, the rollers now white from the lime, I&rsquo;d just seen what was
+wrong.&nbsp; The rollers were not in plumb.&nbsp; One side crushed the
+cane well, but the other side was too open.&nbsp; I shoved my fingers
+in on that side.&nbsp; The big, toothed cogs on the rollers did not
+touch my fingers.&nbsp; And yet, suddenly, they did.&nbsp; With the
+grip of ten thousand devils, my finger-tips were caught, drawn in, and
+pulped to - well, just pulp.&nbsp; And, like a slick of cane, I had
+started on my way.&nbsp; There was no stopping me.&nbsp; Ten thousand
+horses could not have pulled me back.&nbsp; There was nothing to stop
+me.&nbsp; Hand, arm, shoulder, head, and chest, down to the toes of
+me, I was doomed to feed through.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It did hurt.&nbsp; It hurt so much it did not hurt me at all.&nbsp;
+Quite detached, almost may I say, I looked on my hand being ground up,
+knuckle by knuckle, joint by joint, the back of the hand, the wrist,
+the forearm, all in order slowly and inevitably feeding in.&nbsp; O
+engineer hoist by thine own petard!&nbsp; O sugar-maker crushed by thine
+own cane-crusher!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Motomoe sprang forward involuntarily, and the sneer was chased
+from his face by an expression of solicitude.&nbsp; Then the beauty
+of the situation dawned on him, and he chuckled and grinned.&nbsp; No,
+I didn&rsquo;t expect anything of him.&nbsp; Hadn&rsquo;t he tried to
+knock me on the head?&nbsp; What could he do anyway?&nbsp; He didn&rsquo;t
+know anything about engines.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I yelled at the top of my lungs to Ferguson to shut off the
+engine, but the roar of the machinery drowned my voice.&nbsp; And there
+I stood, up to the elbow and feeding right on in.&nbsp; Yes, it did
+hurt.&nbsp; There were some astonishing twinges when special nerves
+were shredded and dragged out by the roots.&nbsp; But I remember that
+I was surprised at the time that it did not hurt worse.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Motomoe made a movement that attracted my attention.&nbsp;
+At the same time he growled out loud, as if he hated himself, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m
+a fool.&rsquo;&nbsp; What he had done was to pick up a cane-knife -
+you know the kind, as big as a machete and as heavy.&nbsp; And I was
+grateful to him in advance for putting me out of my misery.&nbsp; There
+wasn&rsquo;t any sense in slowly feeding in till my head was crushed,
+and already my arm was pulped half way from elbow to shoulder, and the
+pulping was going right on.&nbsp; So I was grateful, as I bent my head
+to the blow.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Get your head out of the way, you idiot!&rsquo; he
+barked at me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then I understood and obeyed.&nbsp; I was a big man, and
+he took two hacks to do it; but he hacked my arm off just outside the
+shoulder and dragged me back and laid me down on the cane.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, the sugar paid - enormously; and I built for the Princess
+the church of her saintly dream, and . . . she married me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He partly assuaged his thirst, and uttered his final word.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alackaday!&nbsp; Shuttlecock and battle-dore.&nbsp; And this
+at, the end of it all, lined with boilerplate that even alcohol will
+not corrode and that only alcohol will tickle.&nbsp; Yet have I lived,
+and I kiss my hand to the dear dust of my Princess long asleep in the
+great mausoleum of King John that looks across the Vale of Manona to
+the alien flag that floats over the bungalow of the British Government
+House. . . &rdquo;</p>
+<p>Fatty pledged him sympathetically, and sympathetically drank out
+of his own small can.&nbsp; Bruce Cadogan Cavendish glared into the
+fire with implacable bitterness.&nbsp; He was a man who preferred to
+drink by himself.&nbsp; Across the thin lips that composed the cruel
+slash of his mouth played twitches of mockery that caught Fatty&rsquo;s
+eye.&nbsp; And Fatty, making sure first that his rock-chunk was within
+reach, challenged.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, how about yourself, Bruce Cadogan Cavendish?&nbsp; It&rsquo;s
+your turn.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The other lifted bleak eyes that bored into Fatty&rsquo;s until he
+physically betrayed uncomfortableness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve lived a hard life,&rdquo; Slim grated harshly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What do I know about love passages?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No man of your build and make-up could have escaped them,&rdquo;
+Fatty wheedled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what of it?&rdquo; Slim snarled.&nbsp; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+no reason for a gentleman to boast of amorous triumphs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, go on, be a good fellow,&rdquo; Fatty urged.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+night&rsquo;s still young.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ve still some drink left.&nbsp;
+Delarouse and I have contributed our share.&nbsp; It isn&rsquo;t often
+that three real ones like us get together for a telling.&nbsp; Surely
+you&rsquo;ve got at least one adventure in love you aren&rsquo;t ashamed
+to tell about - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>Bruce Cadogan Cavendish pulled forth his iron quoit and seemed to
+debate whether or not he should brain the other.&nbsp; He sighed, and
+put back the quoit.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very well, if you will have it,&rdquo; he surrendered with
+manifest reluctance.&nbsp; &ldquo;Like you two, I have had a remarkable
+constitution.&nbsp; And right now, speaking of armour-plate lining,
+I could drink the both of you down when you were at your prime.&nbsp;
+Like you two, my beginnings were far distant and different.&nbsp; That
+I am marked with the hall-mark of gentlehood there is no discussion
+. . . unless either of you care to discuss the matter now . . . &rdquo;</p>
+<p>His one hand slipped into his pocket and clutched the quoit.&nbsp;
+Neither of his auditors spoke nor betrayed any awareness of his menace.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It occurred a thousand miles to the westward of Manatomana,
+on the island of Tagalag,&rdquo; he continued abruptly, with an air
+of saturnine disappointment in that there had been no discussion.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But first I must tell you of how I got to Tagalag.&nbsp; For
+reasons I shall not mention, by paths of descent I shall not describe,
+in the crown of my manhood and the prime of my devilishness in which
+Oxford renegades and racing younger sons had nothing on me, I found
+myself master and owner of a schooner so well known that she shall remain
+historically nameless.&nbsp; I was running blackbird labour from the
+west South Pacific and the Coral Sea to the plantations of Hawaii and
+the nitrate mines of Chili - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was you who cleaned out the entire population of - &rdquo;
+Fatty exploded, ere he could check his speech.</p>
+<p>The one hand of Bruce Cadogan Cavendish flashed pocketward and flashed
+back with the quoit balanced ripe for business.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Proceed,&rdquo; Fatty sighed.&nbsp; &ldquo;I . . . I have
+quite forgotten what I was going to say.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Beastly funny country over that way,&rdquo; the narrator drawled
+with perfect casualness.&nbsp; &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve read this Sea Wolf
+stuff - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You weren&rsquo;t the Sea Wolf,&rdquo; Whiskers broke in with
+involuntary positiveness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; was the snarling answer.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+Sea Wolf&rsquo;s dead, isn&rsquo;t he?&nbsp; And I&rsquo;m still alive,
+aren&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, of course,&rdquo; Whiskers conceded.&nbsp; &ldquo;He
+suffocated head-first in the mud off a wharf in Victoria a couple of
+years back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As I was saying - and I don&rsquo;t like interruptions,&rdquo;
+Bruce Cadogan Cavendish proceeded, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a beastly funny
+country over that way.&nbsp; I was at Taki-Tiki, a low island that politically
+belongs to the Solomons, but that geologically doesn&rsquo;t at all,
+for the Solomons are high islands.&nbsp; Ethnographically it belongs
+to Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, because all the breeds of the
+South Pacific have gravitated to it by canoe-drift and intricately,
+degeneratively, and amazingly interbred.&nbsp; The scum of the scrapings
+of the bottom of the human pit, biologically speaking, resides in Taka-Tiki.&nbsp;
+And I know the bottom and whereof I speak.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was a beastly funny time of it I had, diving out shell,
+fishing beche-de-mer, trading hoop-iron and hatchets for copra and ivory-nuts,
+running niggers and all the rest of it.&nbsp; Why, even in Fiji the
+Lotu was having a hard time of it and the chiefs still eating long-pig.&nbsp;
+To the westward it was fierce - funny little black kinky-heads, man-eaters
+the last Jack of them, and the jackpot fat and spilling over with wealth
+- &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jack-pots?&rdquo; Fatty queried.&nbsp; At sight of an irritable
+movement, he added: &ldquo;You see, I never got over to the West like
+Delarouse and you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re all head-hunters.&nbsp; Heads are valuable,
+especially a white man&rsquo;s head.&nbsp; They decorate the canoe-houses
+and devil-devil houses with them.&nbsp; Each village runs a jack-pot,
+and everybody antes.&nbsp; Whoever brings in a white man&rsquo;s head
+takes the pot.&nbsp; If there aren&rsquo;t openers for a long time,
+the pot grows to tremendous proportions.&nbsp; Beastly funny, isn&rsquo;t
+it?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know.&nbsp; Didn&rsquo;t a Holland mate die on me of blackwater?&nbsp;
+And didn&rsquo;t I win a pot myself?&nbsp; It was this way.&nbsp; We
+were lying at Lango-lui at the time.&nbsp; I never let on, and arranged
+the affair with Johnny, my boat-steerer.&nbsp; He was a kinky-head himself
+from Port Moresby.&nbsp; He cut the dead mate&rsquo;s head off and sneaked
+ashore in the might, while I whanged away with my rifle as if I were
+trying to get him.&nbsp; He opened the pot with the mate&rsquo;s head,
+and got it, too.&nbsp; Of course, next day I sent in a landing boat,
+with two covering boats, and fetched him off with the loot.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How big was the pot?&rdquo; Whiskers asked.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+heard of a pot at Orla worth eighty quid.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To commence with,&rdquo; Slim answered, &ldquo;there were
+forty fat pigs, each worth a fathom of prime shell-money, and shell-money
+worth a quid a fathom.&nbsp; That was two hundred dollars right there.&nbsp;
+There were ninety-eight fathoms of shell-money, which is pretty close
+to five hundred in itself.&nbsp; And there were twenty-two gold sovereigns.&nbsp;
+I split it four ways: one-fourth to Johnny, one-fourth to the ship,
+one-fourth to me as owner, and one-fourth to me as skipper.&nbsp; Johnny
+never complained.&nbsp; He&rsquo;d never had so much wealth all at one
+time in his life.&nbsp; Besides, I gave him a couple of the mate&rsquo;s
+old shirts.&nbsp; And I fancy the mate&rsquo;s head is still there decorating
+the canoe-house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not exactly Christian burial of a Christian,&rdquo; Whiskers
+observed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But a lucrative burial,&rdquo; Slim retorted.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+had to feed the rest of the mate over-side to the sharks for nothing.&nbsp;
+Think of feeding an eight-hundred-dollar head along with it.&nbsp; It
+would have been criminal waste and stark lunacy.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, anyway, it was all beastly funny, over there to the
+westward.&nbsp; And, without telling you the scrape I got into at Taki-Tiki,
+except that I sailed away with two hundred kinky-heads for Queensland
+labour, and for my manner of collecting them had two British ships of
+war combing the Pacific for me, I changed my course and ran to the westward
+thinking to dispose of the lot to the Spanish plantations on Bangar.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Typhoon season.&nbsp; We caught it.&nbsp; The <i>Merry Mist</i>
+was my schooner&rsquo;s name, and I had thought she was stoutly built
+until she hit that typhoon.&nbsp; I never saw such seas.&nbsp; They
+pounded that stout craft to pieces, literally so.&nbsp; The sticks were
+jerked out of her, deckhouses splintered to match-wood, rails ripped
+off, and, after the worst had passed, the covering boards began to go.&nbsp;
+We just managed to repair what was left of one boat and keep the schooner
+afloat only till the sea went down barely enough to get away.&nbsp;
+And we outfitted that boat in a hurry.&nbsp; The carpenter and I were
+the last, and we had to jump for it as he went down.&nbsp; There were
+only four of us - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lost all the niggers?&rdquo; Whiskers inquired.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some of them swam for some time,&rdquo; Slim replied.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t fancy they made the land.&nbsp; We were ten
+days&rsquo; in doing it.&nbsp; And we had a spanking breeze most of
+the way.&nbsp; And what do you think we had in the boat with us?&nbsp;
+Cases of square-face gin and cases of dynamite.&nbsp; Funny, wasn&rsquo;t
+it?&nbsp; Well, it got funnier later on.&nbsp; Oh, there was a small
+beaker of water, a little salt horse, and some salt-water-soaked sea
+biscuit - enough to keep us alive to Tagalag.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now Tagalag is the disappointingest island I&rsquo;ve ever
+beheld.&nbsp; It shows up out of the sea so as you can make its fall
+twenty miles off.&nbsp; It is a volcano cone thrust up out of deep sea,
+with a segment of the crater wall broken out.&nbsp; This gives sea entrance
+to the crater itself, and makes a fine sheltered harbour.&nbsp; And
+that&rsquo;s all.&nbsp; Nothing lives there.&nbsp; The outside and the
+inside of the crater are too steep.&nbsp; At one place, inside, is a
+patch of about a thousand coconut palms.&nbsp; And that&rsquo;s all,
+as I said, saving a few insects.&nbsp; No four-legged thing, even a
+rat, inhabits the place.&nbsp; And it&rsquo;s funny, most awful funny,
+with all those coconuts, not even a coconut crab.&nbsp; The only meat-food
+living was schools of mullet in the harbour - fattest, finest, biggest
+mullet I ever laid eyes on.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And the four of us landed on the little beach and set up housekeeping
+among the coconuts with a larder full of dynamite and square-face.&nbsp;
+Why don&rsquo;t you laugh?&nbsp; It&rsquo;s funny, I tell you.&nbsp;
+Try it some time. - Holland gin and straight coconut diet.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve
+never been able to look a confectioner&rsquo;s window in the face since.&nbsp;
+Now I&rsquo;m not strong on religion like Chauncey Delarouse there,
+but I have some primitive ideas; and my concept of hell is an illimitable
+coconut plantation, stocked with cases of square-face and populated
+by ship-wrecked mariners.&nbsp; Funny?&nbsp; It must make the devil
+scream.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know, straight coconut is what the agriculturists call
+an unbalanced ration.&nbsp; It certainly unbalanced our digestions.&nbsp;
+We got so that whenever hunger took an extra bite at us, we took another
+drink of gin.&nbsp; After a couple of weeks of it, Olaf, a squarehead
+sailor, got an idea.&nbsp; It came when he was full of gin, and we,
+being in the same fix, just watched him shove a cap and short fuse into
+a stick of dynamite and stroll down toward the boat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It dawned on me that he was going to shoot fish if there were
+any about; but the sun was beastly hot, and I just reclined there and
+hoped he&rsquo;d have luck.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;About half an hour after he disappeared we heard the explosion.&nbsp;
+But he didn&rsquo;t come back.&nbsp; We waited till the cool of sunset,
+and down on the beach found what had become of him.&nbsp; The boat was
+there all right, grounded by the prevailing breeze, but there was no
+Olaf.&nbsp; He would never have to eat coconut again.&nbsp; We went
+back, shakier than ever, and cracked another square-face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The next day the cook announced that he would rather take
+his chance with dynamite than continue trying to exist on coconut, and
+that, though he didn&rsquo;t know anything about dynamite, he knew a
+sight too much about coconut.&nbsp; So we bit the detonator down for
+him, shoved in a fuse, and picked him a good fire-stick, while he jolted
+up with a couple more stiff ones of gin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was the same programme as the day before.&nbsp; After a
+while we heard the explosion and at twilight went down to the boat,
+from which we scraped enough of the cook for a funeral.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The carpenter and I stuck it out two days more, then we drew
+straws for it and it was his turn.&nbsp; We parted with harsh words;
+for he wanted to take a square-face along to refresh himself by the
+way, while I was set against running any chance of wasting the gin.&nbsp;
+Besides, he had more than he could carry then, and he wobbled and staggered
+as he walked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Same thing, only there was a whole lot of him left for me
+to bury, because he&rsquo;d prepared only half a stick.&nbsp; I managed
+to last it out till next day, when, after duly fortifying myself, I
+got sufficient courage to tackle the dynamite.&nbsp; I used only a third
+of a stick - you know, short fuse, with the end split so as to hold
+the head of a safety match.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s where I mended my predecessors&rsquo;
+methods.&nbsp; Not using the match-head, they&rsquo;d too-long fuses.&nbsp;
+Therefore, when they spotted a school of mullet; and lighted the fuse,
+they had to hold the dynamite till the fuse burned short before they
+threw it.&nbsp; If they threw it too soon, it wouldn&rsquo;t go off
+the instant it hit the water, while the splash of it would frighten
+the mullet away.&nbsp; Funny stuff dynamite.&nbsp; At any rate, I still
+maintain mine was the safer method.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I picked up a school of mullet before I&rsquo;d been rowing
+five minutes.&nbsp; Fine big fat ones they were, and I could smell them
+over the fire.&nbsp; When I stood up, fire-stick in one hand, dynamite
+stick in the other, my knees were knocking together.&nbsp; Maybe it
+was the gin, or the anxiousness, or the weakness and the hunger, and
+maybe it was the result of all of them, but at any rate I was all of
+a shake.&nbsp; Twice I failed to touch the fire-stick to the dynamite.&nbsp;
+Then I did, heard the match-head splutter, and let her go.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now I don&rsquo;t know what happened to the others, but I
+know what I did.&nbsp; I got turned about.&nbsp; Did you ever stem a
+strawberry and throw the strawberry away and pop the stem into your
+mouth?&nbsp; That&rsquo;s what I did.&nbsp; I threw the fire-stick into
+the water after the mullet and held on to the dynamite.&nbsp; And my
+arm went off with the stick when it went off. . . . &rdquo;</p>
+<p>Slim investigated the tomato-can for water to mix himself a drink,
+but found it empty.&nbsp; He stood up.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Heigh ho,&rdquo; he yawned, and started down the path to the
+river.</p>
+<p>In several minutes he was back.&nbsp; He mixed the due quantity of
+river slush with the alcohol, took a long, solitary drink, and stared
+with bitter moodiness into the fire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but . . . &rdquo; Fatty suggested.&nbsp; &ldquo;What
+happened then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; sad Slim.&nbsp; &ldquo;Then the princess married
+me, of course.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you were the only person left, and there wasn&rsquo;t
+any princess . . . &rdquo;&nbsp; Whiskers cried out abruptly, and then
+let his voice trail away to embarrassed silence.</p>
+<p>Slim stared unblinkingly into the fire.</p>
+<p>Percival Delaney and Chauncey Delarouse looked at each other.&nbsp;
+Quietly, in solemn silence, each with his one arm aided the one arm
+of the other in rolling and tying his bundle.&nbsp; And in silence,
+bundles slung on shoulders, they went away out of the circle of firelight.&nbsp;
+Not until they reached the top of the railroad embankment did they speak.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No gentleman would have done it,&rdquo; said Whiskers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No gentleman would have done it,&rdquo; Fatty agreed.</p>
+<p>Glen Ellen, California,<br /><i>September</i> 26, 1916.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
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